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NOTES. 



BY PEECEY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 



FOURTH EDITION. 




PUBLISHED AT "THE CITIZEIS^ OE THE WORLD" OEEICE, 

Chatham Square, (No. 1 Bowery.) 

1852. 




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BY THE FIRST AMERICAN PUBLISHERS, 

(FRANCES -WRIGHT AND R. D. OWEN.) 



If intellectual powers of the first order, if a disinterested- 
ness that was pushed almost to generous romance, if social 
virtues that endeared him to every one with whom he came in 
contact, if purity of heart and sweetness of temper and upright- 
ness of life — if these entitle to a place among the amiable and 
the gifted and the noble-hearted, that place belongs to Percey 
Bysshe Shelley. Born and educated amidst the affluences 
of British aristocracy, cradled (vso to speak) in orthodoxy and 
conformity and titled privilege, he was a democrat and a here- 
tic. His father. Sir John Shellej^, disinherited him on account 
of his opinions, or rather of his honesty in expressing them ; 
and the world continued a persecution against him for the 
same heinous crime ; a persecution which did not terminate 
with his death, but pursued even the memory of one, whom 
mankind in the mass were too hypocritical to applaud, or per- 
haps too gross to appreciate. He was arraigned, tried, and 
convicted of heterodoxy; and that was enough to justify, in 
the world's eyes, the murder of his reputation. 

Yet the bitterest of his enemies dare not accuse him of sel- 
fishness, of ingratitude, of unkindness, of any moral delin- 



IV NOTICE OF SHELLEY. 

quency. His only offences were against orthodox opinions ; 
his crimes were the crimes of conscientiousness ; the same 
crimes that brought to Socrates the bowl of hemlock, and to Je- 
sus, probably, the death of the cross. 

Let one who confesses himself to have been once so strongly 
prejudiced against Shelley, as to have refused even to visit 
him, sketch his character. We quote from Landor, the well- 
known author of ^^ Imaginary Co7iversations.^' 

*' Shelley, at the gates of Pisa, threw himself between Byron 
and a dragoon, whose sword in his indignation was lifted and 
about to strike. Byron told a common friend sometime after- 
wards, that he could not conceive how any man living should 
act so. * Do you know, he might have been killed 1 and there 
was every appearance that he would be!' The answer was: 
* Between you and Shelley there is but little similarity, and 
perhaps but little sympathy ; yet what Shelley did then, he 
would do again, and always. — There is not a human creature, 
not even the most hostile, that he would hesitate to protect from 
injury at the imminent hazard of his life. And yet life, which 
he would throw forward so unguardedly, is somewhat more 
with him than with others ; it is full of hopes and aspirations, 
it is teeming with warm feelings, and it is rich and overrun 
with its own native, simple enjoyments. In him, every thing 
that ever gave pleasure gives it still, with the same freshness, 
the same exuberance, the same earnestness to communicate 
and share it.' 'By heaven! I cannot understand it!' cried 
Byron ; ' a man to run upon a naked sword for another !' 
Innocent and careless as a boy, Shelley possessed all the deli- 
cate feelings of a gentleman, all the discrimination of a scholar, 
and united in just degrees the ardour of the poet with the 
patience and forbearance of the philosopher. His generosity 
and charity went far beyond those of any man, I believe, at 



NOTICE OF SHELLEY. 



present in existence. He was never known to speak evil of an 
enemy, unless that enemy had done some grievous injustice to 
another : and he divided his income of only one thousand 
pounds, with the fallen and afflicted. This is the man against 
whom much clamor has been raised by poor prejudiced fools, 
and by those who live and lap under their tables. This is the 
man whom, from one false story about his former wife, I had 
refused to visit at Pisa ! I blush in anguish at my prejudice 
and injustice, and ought hardly to feel it as a blessing or a 
consolation, that I regret him less than I should have done if I 
had known him personally." 

As a poet, Shelley has been greatly and justly admired. 
There is much of original and sterling beauty in all his poeti- 
cal works. He may, indeed, with some reason, be taxed, in 
common with many of the most admired among poets, with 
obscurity and overstraining of the imagination. But there is 
so much of redeeming in the beautiful thoughts, chaste images, 
and noble sentiments scattered through his productions, that 
one forgets to dwell upon their blemishes. 

Yet, it is not as a poet that Shelley's character appears in 
its fairest light. - It is as a high-minded reformer, as an im- 
bending lover of truth, as an enthusiastic friend of human 
improyement. He was one of those pure beings who seem to 
be born some ages before their time ; whose high aspirations 
after excellence scarcely belong to this generation. His poetic 
dreams had reference to that future — to use his own beautiful 
words — 

*' "When reason's voice. 
Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked 
The nations : and mankind perceive, that vice 
Is discord, war, and misery : that virtue 
Is peace, and happiness, and harmony : 
When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
The playthings of its childhood : kingly glare 



VI NOTICE OF SHELLEY. 

Shall lose its power to dazzle : its authority 
Shall silently pass by r the gorgeous throne 
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, 
Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
As that of truth is now." 

He sought to make a Heaven of Earth ; and truly if such as 
he only were the earth's inhabitants, we might have one. 

The little poem now republished, is especially valuable on 
account of the notes affixed to it. It has borne all the viru- 
lence of servile criticism ; and has come from the ordeal with 
even an increased popularity. Yef posterity alone will do am- 
ple justice to its merits. 



QUEEN MAB 



I. 



How wonderful is Death ! 
Death and his brother Sleep ! 
One, pale as yonder waning moon 

With lips of lurid blue ; 
The other, rosy as the morn 

When throned on ocean's wave 

It blushes o'er the world ; * 
Yet both so passing wonderful ! 

Hath then the gloomy Power 
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
Seized on her sinless soul '? 
Must then that peerless form 
Which love and admiration cannot view 
Without a beating heart, those azure veins 
Which steal like streams along a field of snow, 
That lovely outline, which is fair 
As breathing marble, perish 1 
Must putrefaction's breath 
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 

But loathsomeness and ruin 1 
Spare nothing* but a gloomy theme, 
On which the lightest heart might moralize 1 
Or is it only a sweet slumber 

Stealing o'er sensation, 
Which the breath of roseate morning 
Chaseth into darkness 1 
Will lanthe wake again. 
And give that faithful bosom joy 
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
Light, life, and rapture from her smile 1 



QUEEN MAB. [l. 



Yes ! she will wake again, 
Although her glowing limbs are motionless, 

And silent those sweet lips, 

Once breathing eloquence 
That might have soothed a tiger's rage. 
Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. 

Her dewy eyes are closed. 
And on their lids, whose texture fine 
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath. 

The baby Sleep is pillowed: 

Her golden tresses shade 

The bosom's stainless pride, 
Curling like tendrils of the parasite 

Around a marble column. 

Hark ! whence that rushing sound 1 

'Tis like the wond'rous strain 
That round a lonely ruin swells, 
Which, wandering on the echoing shore, 
The enthusiast hears at evening : 
'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh : 
'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes 
Of that strange lyre whose strings 
The genii of the breezes sweep ; 

Those lines of rainbow light 

Are like the moonbeams when they fall 
Through some cathedral window, but the tints 

Are such as may not find 

Comparison on earth. 

Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen ! 

Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air ; 
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, 
And stop obedient to the reins of light : 

These the Queen of Spells drew in. 

She spread a charm around the spot. 
And leaning graceful from the ethereal car. 

Long did she gaze, and silently. 
Upon the slumbering maid. 

Oh ! not the visioned poet in his dreams. 

When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain. 



I.] QUEEN MAB. 



When every sight of loveh'', wild and grand 
Astonishes, enraptures, elevates, — 
When fancy, at a glance, combines 
The wondrous and the beautiful, — 
55o bright, so fair, so wild a shape 
Hath ever yet beheld, 
As that which reined the coursers of the air, 
And poured the magic of her gaze 
Upon the maiden's sleep. 

The broad and yellow moon 

Shone dimh^ through her form — 
That form of faultless symmetry ; 
The pearly and pellucid car 

Moved not the moonlight's line : 

'Twas not an earthly pageant : 
Those who had looked upon the sight. 

Passing all human glory, 

Saw not the yellow moon. 

Saw not the mortal scene. 

Heard not the night-wind's rush, 

Heard not an earthly sound, 

Saw but the fairy pageant, 

Heard but the heavenly strains 

That filled the lonely dwellmg. 

The fairj^'s frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud. 
That catches but the palest tinge of even. 
And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow. 
Where scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
That gems the glittering coronet of morn. 
Sheds not a light so mild so powerful, 
As that which bursting from the Fairy's form, 
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene. 
Yet with an undulating motion. 
Swayed to her outline gracefully. 

From her celestial car 
The Fairy Queen descended. 
And thrice she waved her wand 
Circled with wreaths of amaranth : 

Al 



10 QUEEN MAB. [l. 



Her thin and misty form 
Moved with the moving air, 
And the clear silver tones, 
As thus she spoke, were such 
As are unheard by all but gifted ear. 



Stars ! your balmiest influence shed ! 
Elements your wrath suspend ! 
Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 
That circle thy domain ! 
Let not a breath be seen to stir 
Around yon grass-grown ruin's height, 
Let even the restless gossamer 
Sleep on the moveless air ! 
Soul of lanthe ! thou, 
Judged alone worthy of the envied boon, 
That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits 
Those who have struggled, and with resolute will 
Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains 
The icy chains of custom, and have shone 
The day-stars of their age ! — Soul of lanthe ! 
Awake ! arise ! 

Sudden arose 
lanthe's soul ; it stood 
All beautiful in naked purity, 
The perfect semblance of its bodily frame 
Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace. 
Each stain of earthliness 
Had passed away, it reassumed 
Its native dignity, and stood 
Immortal amid ruin. 

Upon the couch the body lay 

Wrapt in the depth of slumber ; 
Its features were fixed and meaningless. 

Yet animal life was there, 
And every organ yet performed 
Its natural functions : 'twas a sight 
Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 



I-] 



QUEEN MAB. 11 



The self-same lineaments, the same 

Marks of identity were there : 
Yet, oh, how different ! one aspires to heaven, 
Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
And ever-changing, ever rising still, 

"Wantons in endless being. 
The other, for a time the imwilling sport 
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on ; 
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly ; 
Then, like an useless and worn-out machine, 
Rots, perishes, and passes. 



Spirit ! who has dived so deep ; 
Spirit ! who has soared so high ; 
Thou the fearless, thou the mild, 
Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, 
Ascend the car with me. 



Do I dream 1 Is this new feeling 
But a visioned ghost of slumber! 

If indeed I am a soul, 
A free, a disembodied soul, 

Speak again to me. 



I am the Fairy Mab : to me 'tis given 
The wonders of the human world to keep : 
The secrets of the immeasurable past. 
In the unfailing consciences of men. 
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find : 
The future, from the causes which arise 
In ea.ch event, I gather : not the sting 
Which retributive memory implants 
In the hard bosom of the selfish man ; 
Nor that extatic and exulting throb 
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up 
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day 



12 QUEEN MAB. [l. 



Are unforeseen, unregistered by me : 
And it is yet permitted me, to rend 
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit 
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know 
How soonest to accomplish the great end 
For which it hath its being, and may taste 
That peace which in the end all life will share. 
This is the meed of virtue ; happy soul, 
Ascend the car with me I 

The chains of earth's immurement 

Fell from lanthe's spirit ; 
They shrank and broke like bandages of straw 
Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 

She knew her glorious change, 
And felt, in apprehensions uncontrolled. 

New raptures opening round ; 
Each day-dream of her mortal life. 
Each frenzied vision of the slumbers 

That closed each well-spent day. 

Seemed now to meet reality. 

The Fairy and the Soul proceeded ; 
The silver clouds disparted ; 
And as the car of magic they ascended, 
Again the speechless music swelled. 
Again the coursers of the air, 
Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen 
Shaking the beamy reins 
Bade them pursue their way. 

The magic car moved on. 
The night was fair, and countless stars 
Studded heaven's dark blue vault, — 

Just o'er the eastern wave 
Peeped the urst faint smile of morn : — 
The magic car moved on — 
From the celestial hoofs 
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew, 

And where the burning wheels 
Eddied above the mountains loftiest peak, 
Was traced a line of lightning. 



I.] 



QUEEN MAB. 13 



Now it flew far above a rock, 

The utmost verge of earth, 
The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 

Lowered o'er the silver sea. 

Far, far below the chariot's path, 

Calm as a slumbering babe, 

Tremendous Ocean lay. 
The mirror of its stillness showed 

The pale and waning stars, 

The chariot's fiery track, 

And the grey light of morn 

Tinging these fleecy clouds 

That canopied the dawn. 
Seemed it that the chariot's way 
Lay through the midst of an immense concave, 
Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
With shades of infinite color, 
And semicircled with a belt 

Flashing incessant meteors. 

The magic car moved on. 

As they approached their goal 
The coursers seemed to gather speed ; 
The sea no longer was distinguished ; earth 
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere ; 

The sun's unclouded orb 

Rolled through the black concave ; 

Its rays of rapid light 
Parted around the chariot's swifter course. 
And fell like ocean's feathery spray 

Dashed from the boiling surge 

Before a vessel's prow. 

The magic car moved on. 

Earth's distant orb appeared 
The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven ; 

"Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems rolled. 
And countless spheres diffused 

An ever varying glory. 
It was a sight of wonder ; some 

a2 



14 QUEEN MAB. [ll. 



Were horned like the crescent moon ; 
Some shed a mild and silver beam 
Like Hesperus o'er the western sea ; 
Some dash'd athwart with trains of flame. 
Like worlds to death and ruin driven ; 
Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed, 
Eclipsed all other light. 

Spirit of Nature ! here, 
In this interminable wilderness 
Of worlds, at whose immensity- 
Even soaring fancy staggers, 
Hene is thy fitting temple. 
Yet not the lightest leaf 
That quivers to the passing breeze 
Is less instinct with thee : 
Yet not the meanest worm 
That lurks in graves and fattens on the deacl 
Less shares thy eternal breath. 
Spirit of Nature ! thou ! 
Iniperishable as this scene. 
Here is thy fitting temple. 



II. 

If solitude hath ever led thy steps 

To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 
And thou hast lingered there. 
Until the sun's broad orb 

Seemed resting on the burnished wave, 
Thou must have marked the lines 

Of purple gold, that motionless 
Hung o'er the sinking sphere ; 

Thou must have marked the billowy clouds 

Ed^ed with intolerable radiancy- 
Towering like rocks of jet 
Crowned with a diamond wreath. 
And yet there is a moment, 
When the sun's highest point 



II.] 



QUEEN MAB. 15 



Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge, 
"When those far clouds of feathery gold. 
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
Like islands on a dark blue sea ; 
Then has thy fancy soared above the earth. 
And furled its wearied wing 
Within the Fairy's fane. 



Yet not the golden islands 
Gleaming in yon flood of light, 
Nor the feathery curtains 
Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch, 
Nor the burnished ocean waves 
Paving that gorgeous dome, 
So fair, so wonderful a sight 
As Mab's ethereal palace could afford. 
Yet likest evening's vault that fairy hall ! 
As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread 
Its floors of flashing light. 
Its vast and azure dome. 
Its fertile, golden islands 
Floating on a silver sea ; 
Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted 
Through clouds of circumambient darkness, 
And pearly battlements around 
Looked o'er the immense of heaven. 
The magic car no longer moved. 
The Fairy and the Spirit 
Entered the Hall of Spells ; 
Those golden clouds 
That rolled in glittering billows 
Beneath the azure canopy 
With the ethereal footsteps, trembled not ; 

The light and crimson mists, 
Floating to strains of thrilling" melody 
Through that unearthly dwelling. 
Yielded to every movement of the will. 
Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned. 
And, for the varied bliss that pressed around. 
Used not the glorious privilege 
Of virtue and of vrisdom. 



16 QUEEN MAB. [u. 



Spirit ! the Fairy saidj 
And pointed to the gorgeous dome, 

This is a wondrous sight 
And mocks all human grandeur ; 
But, were it virtue's only meed to dwell 
In a celestial palace, all resigned 
To pleasurable impulses, immured 
Within the prison of itself, the will 
Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled. 
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come ! 
This is thine high reward : — the past shall rise : 
Thou shalt behold the present ; I will teach 

The secrets of the future. 



The Fairy and the Spirit 
Approached the overhanging battlement.— 
JBelow lay stretched the universe ! 
There, far as the remotest line, 
That bounds imagination's flight, 
Countless and unending orbs 
In mazy motion intermingled, 
Yet still fulfilled immutably 
Eternal Nature's law. 
Above, below, around 
The circling systems formed 
A wilderness of harmony : 
Each with undeviating aim. 
In eloquent silence through the depths of space 
Pursued its wondrous way. 
There was a little light 
That twinkled in the misty distance : 
None but a spirit's eye 
Might ken that rolling orb ; 
None but a spirit's eye. 
And in no other place 
But that celestial dwelling, might behold 
Each action of this earth's inhabitants. 

But matter, space, and time 
In those aerial mansions cease to act ; . 
And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 



11.] 



QUEEN MAB. 17 



Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
Fears to attempt the conquest. 

The Fairy pointed to the earth. 

The Spirit's intellectual eye 

Its kindred beings recognized. 
The thronging- thousands to a passing view, 
Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens. 

How wonderful ! that even 
The passions, prejudices, interests, 
That swayed the meanest being, the weak touch 

That moves the finest nerve, 

And in one human brain 
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 
In the great chain of nature. 

Behold, the Fairy cried, 
Palmyra's ruined palaces ! — 

Behold ! where grandeur frowned ; 

Behold ! where pleasure smiled ; 
What now remains — the memory 

Of senselessness and shame — 

What is immortal there '? 

Nothing — it stands to tell 

A melancholy tale, to give 

An awful warning ; soon 
Oblivion will steal silently 

The remnant of its fame. 

Monarchs and conquerors there 
Proud o'er prostrate millions trod — 
The earthquakes of the human race ; 
Like them, forgotten when the ruin 

That marks their shock is past. 

Beside the eternal Nile, 

The Pyramids have risen. 
Nile shall pursue his changeless way ; 

Those Pyramids shall fall ; 
Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell 

The spot whereon they stood; 
Their very site shall be forgotton, 

As is their builder's name ! 

A3 



18 QUEEN MAB. [ll. 



Behold yon steril spot ; 
Where now the wandering Arab's tent 

Flaps in the desert blast. 
There once old Salem's haughty fane 
Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, 
And in the blushing face of day 

Exposed its shameful glory. 
Oh ! many a widow, many an orphan cursed 
The building of that fame ; and many a father, 
"Worn out with toil and slavery, implored 
The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth. 
And spare his children the detested task 
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning 

The choicest days of life. 

To soothe a dotard's vanity, 
There an inhuman and uncultured race 
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God ; 
They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb 
The unborn child, — old age and infancy 
Promiscuous perished ; their victorious arms 
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they were fiends ; 
But what was he that taught them that the God 
Of nature and benevolence had given 
A special sanction to the trade of blood 1 
His name and theirs are fading, and thfe tales 
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture 
Recites till error credits, are pursuing 

Itself into forgetfulness. 



Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood 

There is a moral desert now : 

The mean and miserable huts, 

The yet more wretched palaces, 

Contrasted with those ancient fanes, . 

Now crumbling to oblivion ; 

The long and lonely colonades, 

Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks 

Seem like a well-known tune, 
Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear, 

Remembered now in sadness. 

But, oh ! how much more changed. 



II.] 



QUEEN MAB. 19 



How gloomier is the contrast 

Of human nature there ! 
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, 
A coward and a fool, spreads death around — 

Then, shuddering meets his own. 
Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, , 

A cowled and hypocritical monk 

Prays, curses, and deceives. 

Spirit ! ten thousand years 
Have scarcely past away. 
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks 
His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons, 
Wakes the unholy song of war, 
Arose a stately city. 
Metropolis of the western continent; 

There, now, the mossy column-stone. 
Indented by Time's unrelenting grasp, 
Which once appeared to brave 
All, save its country's ruin ; 
There the wide forest scene. 
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness 

Of gardens lon^ run wild, 
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps 

Chance in that desert has delayed, 
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. 

Yet once it was the busiest haunt, 
Whither as to a common centre, flocked 
Strangers, and ships, and merchandise : 
Once peace and freedom blest 
The cultivated plain : 
But wealth, that curse of man, 
Blighted the bud of its prosperity ; 
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty. 
Fled, to return not, until man shall know 
That they alone can give the bliss 

Worthy a soul that claims 
Its kindred with eternity. 

There's not one atom of yon earth 

But once was living man ; 
Nor the minutest drop of rain, 



20 QUEEN MAB. [ll. 



That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, 
But flowed in human veins : 
And from the burning plains 
Where Lybian monsters yell, 
From the most gloomy glens 
Of Greenland's sunless clime. 
To where the golden fields 
Of fertile England spread 
Their harvest to the day, 
Thou canst not find one spot 
"Whereon no city stood. 

How strange is human pride ! 
I tell thee that those living things, 
To whom the fragile' blade of grass, 

Tliat springeth in the morn 

And perisheth ere noon, 

Is an unbounded world ; 
I tell the that those viewless beings. 
Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
Of the impassive atmosphere. 
Think, feel, and live like man ; 
That there affections and antipathies, 

Like his, produce the laws 

Ruling their moral state ; 

And the minutest throb 
That through their frame diffuses 

The slightest, faintest motion, 

Is fixed and indispensable 

As the majestic laws 

That rule yon rolling orbs. 

The Fairy paused. The Spirit 
In extacy of admiration, felt 
All knowledge of the past revived ; the events 

Of old and wondrous times. 

Which dim tradition interruptedly 

Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded 

In just perspective to the view ; 

Yet dim from their infinitudes 

The spirit seemed to stand 



HI.] 



QUEEN MAB. ^ 21 



High on an isolated pinnacle ; 

The flood of ages combating below. 

The depth of the unbonded universe 

Above, and all around 
Nature's unchanging harmony. 



III. 

Fairy ! the Spirit said. 

And on the Queen of Spells 

Fixed her ethereal eyes, 

I thank the. Thou hast given 
A boon which I will not resign, and taught 
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know 
The past, and thence I will essay to glean 
A warning for the future, so that man 
May profit by his errors, and derive 

Experience frond his folly ; 
For, when the power of imparting joy 
Is equal to the will, the human soul 

Requires no other heaven. 



Turn thee, surpassing Spirit ! 

Much yet remains unscanned. 

Thou knowest how great is man, 

Thou knowest his imbecility : 

Yet learn thou what he is ; 

Yet learn the lofty destiny 

Which restless time prepares 

For every living soul. 
Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid 
Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers 
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops 
Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks. 
Encompass it around : the dweller there 
Cannot be free and happy ; hearest thou not 
The curses of the fatherless, the groans 
Of those who have no friend 1 He passes on : 



22 QUEEN MAB. [ill. 



The king, the wearer of a gilded chain 

That binds his soul to abjectedness, the fool 

Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave 

Even to the basest appetites — that man 

Heeds not the shriek of penury : he smiles 

At the deep curses which the destitute 

Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy 

Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan 

But for those morsels which his wantonness 

Wastes in unjoyous revelry to save 

All that they love from famine : when he hears 

The tale of horror, to some ready-made face 

Of hypocritical assent he turns, 

Smothering the glow of shame, that spite of him, 

Flushes his bloated cheek. 



Now to the meal 
Of silence, grandeur and excess, he drags 
His palled, unwilling appetite. If gold, 
Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled 
From every clime, could force the loathing sense 
To overcome satiety, — if wealth, 
The spring it drawns from, poisons not, — or ^dce, 
Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not 
Its food to deadliest venom ; then that king 
Is happy ; and the peasant who fulfills 
His unforced task, when he returns at even, 
And by the blazing faggot meets again 
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped. 
Tastes not a sweeter meal. 



Behold him now 
Stretched on the gorgeous couch ; his fevered brain 
Reels dizzily awhile : But, ah ! too soon 
The slumber of intemperance subsides, 
And conscience, that undying serpent, calls 
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task, 
Listen ! he speaks ! oh, mark that frenzied eye- 
Ob ! mark that deadly visage. 



in.] 



QUEEN MAB. 23 



No cessation ! 
Oh ! must this last for ever ! Awful Death, 
I wish, yet fear to clasp thee ! Not one moment 
Of dreamless sleep ! O dear and blessed peace, 
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity 
In penury and dungeons 1 wherefore lurkest 
With danger, death, and solitude ; yet shunn'st 
The palace I have built thee 1 Sacred peace ! 
Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed 
One drop of 'balm upon my withered soul. 

Vain man ! that palace is the virtuous heart. 

And peace defileth not her* snowy robes 

In such a shed as thine. Hark ! yet he mutters ; 

His slumbers are but varied agonies, 

They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. 

There needeth not the hell that bigots frame 

To punish those who err : earth in itself 

Contains at once the evil and the cure ; * 

And all sufficing nature can chastise 

Those who transgress her law, — she only knows 

How justly to proportion to the fault 

The punishment it merits. 

It is strange 
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe 1 
Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug 
The scorpion that consumes him 1 Is it strange 
That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, 
Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 
Within a' splendid prison, whose stern bounds 
Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, 
His soul asserts not its humanity 1 
That man's mild nature rises not in war 
Against a king's employ ! No — 'tis not strange. 
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives 
Just as his father did ; the unconquered powers 
Of precedent and custom interpose 
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, 



24 QUEEN MAB. [ill. 



To those wh6 know not nature, nor deduce 
The future from the present, it may seem, 
That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes 
Of this unnatural being ; not one wretch, 
Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed 
Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm 
To dash him from his throne ! 



Those gilded flies 
That, basking in the sunshine of a court, 
Fatten on its corruption ! — what are they 1 
The drones of the community ; they feed 
On the mechanic's labor : the starved hind 
For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield 
Its unshared harvests ; and you squalid form, 
Leaner thanfleshless misery, that wastes 
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, 
Drags out in labor a protracted death, 
To glut their grandeur ;^any faint with toil. . 
That few may know the cares of woe and sloth. 1 

Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose 1 

Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heep 

Toil and unvanquishable penury 

On those who build their palaces, and bring 

Their daily bread 1 From vice, black loathsome vice ; 

From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong ; 

From all that genders misery, and makes 

Of earth this thorny wilderness ; from lust. 

Revenge, and murder And when reason's voice, 

Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked 
The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
Is discord, war, and miserj"- ; — that virtue 
Is peace, and happiness, and harmony ; 
When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
The playthings of its childhood; — kingly glare 
Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority 
Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall. 
Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 



QUEEN MAB. 25 



Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
As that of truth is now. 



Where is the fame 
Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth 
Seek to eternize 1 Oh ! the faintest sound 
From Time!s light footfall, the minutest wave 
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing 
The unsubstantial bubble. Aye ! to-day 
Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze 
That flashes desolation, strong the arm 
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes! 
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died 
In ages past ; that gaze, a transient flash 
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm 
The worm has made his meal. 



The virtuous man. 
Who, great in his humilily. as kings 
Are little in their grandeur ; he who leads 
Invincibly a life of resolute good, 
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths 
More free and fearless than the trembling judge. 
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove 
To bind the impassive spirit ; — when he falls. 
His mild eye beams benevolence no more ; 
Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve ; 
Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled 
But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave 
Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost 
Withered that arm : but the unfading fame 
Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb ; 
The deathless memory of that man, whom kings 
Call to their mind and tremble ; the remembrance 
With which the happy spirit contemplates *' 
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth. 
Shall never pass away. 

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; 
The subject, not the citizen; for kings 



26 QUEEN MAB. [ill. 



And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play 
A losing game into each other's hands, 
Whose stakes are vioe, and misery. The man 
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. 
Power, like a desolating pestilence. 
Pollutes whate'er it touches : and obedience, 
JBane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth. 
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, 
A mechanized automaton. 



When Nero, 
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy 
Lowered like a fiend, drunk with enraptured ear 
The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld 
The frightful desolation spread, and felt 
A new created sense within his soul 
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound ; 
Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome 
The force of human kindness 1 and, when Rome, 
With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, 
Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood. 
Had not submissive abjectedness destroyed 
Nature's suggestions 1 

Look on yonder earth : 
The golden harvest spring ; the unfailing sun 
Sheds light and life ; the fruits, the flowers, the trees 
Arise in due succession ; all things speak 
Peace harmony, and love. The universe. 
In nature's silent eloquence, declares 
That all fulfill the works of love and joy, — 
All but the outcast man. He fabricates 
The sword which stabs his peace ; he cherisheth 
The snakes that gnaw his heart ; he raiseth up 
The tyrant whose delight is in his woe, 
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, 
Lights it the great alone 1 Yon silver beams. 
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch 
Than on the dome of kings 1 Is mother earth 
A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn 
Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil ; 



QUEEN MAB. 27 



A mother only to those puling babes 
Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 
The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, 
In self-important childishness, that peace 
"Which men alone appreciate 1 

Spirit of Nature ! no ! 
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs 
Alike in every human heart. 

Thou, aye, erectest there 
Thy throne of power unappealable ; 
Thou art the judge beneath whose nod 
Man's brief and frail authority 
Is powerless as the wind 
That passeth idly by. 
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth 
The show of human justice. 
As God surpasses man. 

Spirit of Nature ! thou 
Life of interminable multitudes ; 
Soul of those mighty spheres 
Whose changeless paths thro' heaven's deep silence lie ; 
Soul of that smallest being. 

The dwelling of whose life 
Is one faint April sun-gleam ; — 
Man, like these passive things, 
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 
Which time is fast maturing, 
Will swiftly, surely come ; 
And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest, 
Will be without a flaw 
Marring its perfect symmetry. 



IV. 

How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh. 
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, 
Were discord to the speaking quietude 



4 



28 QUEEN MAB. ' IV.] 



That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, 

Studded with stars unutterably bright, 

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls. 

Seems like a canopy which love had spread 

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills. 

Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 

Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 

So stainless that their white and glittering- spires 

Tinge not the moon's pure beam : yon castled steep 

Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 

So idl}'-, that rapt fancy deemeth it 

A metaphor of peace ; — all form a scene 

Where musing solitude might love to lift 

Her soul above this sphere of earthl!ness ; 

Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, 

So cold, so bright, so still. 

The orb of day, 
In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field 
Sinks sweetly smiling ; not the- faintest breath 
Steals o'er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve 
Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day, 
And vesper's image on the western main 
Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes ; 
Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, 
Roll'd o'er the blackened waters ; the deep roar 
Of distant thunder mutters awfully ; 
Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom 
That shrouds the boiling surge ; the pitiless fiend. 
With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey ; 
The torn deep yawns, — the vessel finds a grave 
Beneath its jagged gulf. 

Ah ! whence yon glare 
That fires the arch of heaven 1 — that dark red smoke 
Blotting the silver moon ! The stars are quenched 
In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round ! 
Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf 'ning peals 
In countless echoes through the mountains ring, 
Startling pale midnight on her starry throne ! 



IV.] 



QUEEN MAB. 29 



Now swells the intermingling din ; the jar 
Frequent and frightful, of the bursting bomb ; 
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, 
The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men 
Inebriate with rage : — loud and more loud 
The discord grows ; till pale death shuts the scene, 
And o'er the conqueror and conquered draws 
His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men 
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, 
In proud and vigorous health ; of all the hearts 
That beat with anxious life at sunset there, 
How few survive, how few are beating now ! 
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm 
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause ; 
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love 
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan 
"With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay 
Wrapt round its struggling powers. 

The grey morn 
Dawns on the mournful scene ; the sulphr#us sm«ke 
Before the icy wind slow rolls away. 
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance ^ 
Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood 
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, 
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path 
Of the outsallying victors ; far behind. 
Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — 
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, 
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 

I see thee shrink 
Surpassing Spirit ! — wert thou human else 1 
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet 
Across thy stainless features ; yet fear not ; 
This is no unconnected misery. 
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 
Man's evil nature, that apology 
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up 



30 QUEEN MAB. [iV. 



For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood 
Which desolates the discord- wasted land. 
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, 
Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe. 
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe 
Strike at the root ; the poison-tree will fall ; 
And where its venomed exhalations spread 
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lie 
Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones 
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, 
A garden shall arise, in loveliness 
Surpassing fabled Eden. 

Hath Nature's soul. 
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord 
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave 
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove. 
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep 
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main. 
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust 
With spirit, thought, and love ; on Man alone, 
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly 
Heaped ruin, vice and slavery ; his soul 
Blasted with withering curses ; placed afar 
The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp ; 
But serving on the frightful gulf to glare. 
Rent wide beneath his footsteps 1 

Nature 1 — no ! 
Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower 
Even in its tender bud ; their influence darts 
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins 
Of desolate society. The child, 
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name. 
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts 
His baby sword even in a hero's mood. 
This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge 
Of devastated earth ; whilst specious names. 
Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour. 
Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims 



QUEEN MAB. 31 



Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword 
Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. " 
Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man 
Inherits vice and misery, when force 
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, 
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. 

Ah ! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps 
From its new tenement, and looks abroad 
For happiness and sympathy, how stern 
And desolate a tract is this wide world ! 
How withered all the buds of natural good ! 
No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms 
Of pitiless power ! on its wretched frame, 
.Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe 
Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung 
Ey morals, law, and custom, the pure winds » 

Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes. 
May breathe not. The untainting light of day 
May visit not its longings. It is bound 
Ere it has life ; yea, all the chains are forged 
Long ere its being ; all liberty and love 
And peace is torn from its defencelessness ; 
Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed 
To abjectness and bondage ! 

Throughout this varied and eternal world 

Soul is the only element, the block 

That for uncounted ages has remained. 

The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight 

Is active, living spirit. Every grain 

Is sentient both in unity and part. 

And the minutest atom comprehends 

A world of loves and hatreds : these beget 

Evil and good : hence truth and falsehood spring : 

Hence will, and thought, and action, all the germs 

Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate. 

That variegate the eternal universe. 

Soul is not more polluted than the beams 

Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines 

The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 



32 QUEEN MAB. [iV. 



Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds 
Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing 
To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste 
' The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 
Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, 
To grovel on the dunghill of his fears. 
To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame 
Of natural love in sensualism, to know 
That hour as blest when on his worthless days 
The frozen hand of death shall set its seal. 
Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. 
The one is man that shall hereafter be ; 
The other, man as vice has made him now. 

I War is the stateman's game, the priest's delight, / 
/The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade, ^Jm^ 
( And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones 
/Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, 
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean. 
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround 
Their palaces, participate the crimes 
That force defends, and from a nation's rage 
Secures the crown, which all the curses reach, 
That famine, frenzy, woe, and penury breathe. 
These are the hired bravos who defend 
The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his fear*: 
These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, 
The refuse of society, the dregs 
Of all that is most vile : their cold hearts blend 
Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, 
All that is mean and villainous with rage 
Which hopelessness of good and self-contempt, 
Alone might kindle ; they are decked in wealth, 
Honor, and power, then are sent abroad 
To do their work. The pestilence that stalks 
In gloomy triumph through some eastern land 
Is less destroying. They cajole with gold. 
And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth 
Already crushed with servitude : he knows 
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes 



QUEEN MAB. 33 



Repentance for his ruin, when his doom 
Is sealed in gold and hlood ! 

Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare 
The feet of justice in the toils of law, 
Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still ; 
And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold, 
Sneering at "public virtue, which beneath • ' 
Their pitiless tread lies lorn and trampled, where 
Honor sits smiling at the sale of truth. 

Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites. 

Without a hope, a passion, or a love, 

"Who, through a life of luxury and lies. 

Have crept by flattery to the seats of power. 

Support the systems whence their honors flow — 

They have three words : — well tyrants know their use. 

Well pay them for their loan, with usury 

Torn from a bleeding world ! God, Hell, and Heaven. 

A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, 

Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage 

Of tameless tigers hungering for blood. 

Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire. 

Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 

Eternal misery to those hapless slaves 

Whose life has been a penance for its crimes. 

And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie 

Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe 

Before the mockeries of earthly power. 

These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, 
Wields in his wrath, and as he wills, destroys, 
Omnipotent in wickedness : the while 
Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does 
His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend 
Force to the weakness of his trembling arm. 
They rise, they fall ; one generation comes 
Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe. 
It fades, another blossoms, yet behold ! 
Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, 
Withering and cankering deep its passive prime. 
He has invented lying words and modes, 



34 QUEEN MAB. [v. 



Empty and vain as his own coreless heart ; 
Evasive meanings, nothing of much sound, 
To lure the heedless victim to the toils 
Spread round the valley of its paradise. 

Look to thyself — priest, conqueror, or prince ! 

Whether thy trade is falsehood, and" thy lusts 

Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor. 

With whom thy master was ; or thou delightest 

In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain, 

All misery weighing nothing in the scale 

Against thy short-lived fame : or thou dost load 

With cowardice and crime the groaning land, 

A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! 

Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er 

Crawled on the loathing earth 1 Are not thy days 

Days of unsatisfying listlessness 1 

Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er. 

When will the morning come '? Is not thy youth 

A vain and feverish dream of sensualism 1 

Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease 1 

Are not thy views of unregretted death 

Drear, comfortless, and horrible 1 Thy mind 

Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame. 

Incapable of judgment, hope, or love 1 

And dost thou wish the errors to survive 

That bar thee from all sympathies of good, 

After the miserable interest 

Thou boldest in their protraction 1 When the grave 

Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself. 

Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth 

To twine its roots around thy coffined clay. 

Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb, 

That of it& fruit thy babes may eat and die 1 



V 



Thus do the generations of the earth 

Go to the grave, and issue from the womb, 

Surviving still the imperishable change 



v.] QUEEN MAB. 35 



That renovates the world ; even as the leaves 
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped 
For many seasons there, though long they choke, 
Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, 
All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees 
From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 
Lie level with the earth to moulder there, 
They fertilize the land they long deformed, 
Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs 
Of youth, integrity, and loveliness 
Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. 
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights 
The fairest feelings of the opening heart, 
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil 
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, 
And judgment cease to wage unnatural war 
With passion's unsubduable array. 

Twin-sister of religion, selfishness ! 
Rival in crime and falsehood, spring all 
The wanton horrors of her bloody play : 
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless. 
Shunning the light, and owning not its name. 
Compelled, by its deformity, to screen 
With flimsy veil of justice and of right, 
Its unattractive lineaments, that scare 
All, save the brood of ignorance : at once 
The cause and the effect of tyranny ; 
Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile ; 
Dead to all love but of its abjectness. 
With heart impassive by more noble powers 
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame ; 
Despising its own miserable being. 
Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthral. 

Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange 

Of all that human art or nature yield ; 

Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, 

And natural kindness hasten to supply 

From the full fountain of its boundless love, 



36 QtJEEN MAB. [v. 



For ever stifled, ckained, and tainted now. 

Commerce ! beneath whose poison-breathing shade 

No solitary virtue dares to spring. 

But poverty and wealth, with equal hand, 

Scatter their withering curses, and unfold 

The doors of premature and violent death, 

To pining famine and full-fed disease, 

To all that shares the lot of human life, 

Which, poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain, 

That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind. 

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, 

The signet of its all-enslaving power 

Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: 

Before whose image bow the vulgar great, 

The vainly rich, the miserable proud. 

The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings. 

And with blind feelings reverence the power 

That grinds them to the dust of misery. 

But in the temple of their hireling hearts. 

Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn 

All earthly things but virtue. 

Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, 
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride : >j- 
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world 
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes 
The despot numbers ; from his cabinet 
These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, 
Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, 
Beneath a vulgar master, to perform 
A task of cold and brutal drudgery ; — 
Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, 
Scarce living puUies of a dead machine, 
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, 
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth ! 

The harmony and happiness of man 

Yields to the wealth of nations ; that which lifts 



QFEEN MAB. 33?. 



His nature to the heaven of its pride, 

Is bartered for the poison of his soul ; 

The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, 

Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain. 

Withering all passion but of slavish fear. 

Extinguishing all free and generous love 

Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse 

That fancy kindles in the beating heart 

To mingle with sensation, it destroys, — 

Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self. 

The grovelling hope of interest and gold. 

Unqualified, unmingled, •unredeemed 

Even by hypocrisy. 

And statesmen boast 
Of wealth ! the wordy eloquence that lives 
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 
The bitter poison of a nation's woe, 
Can turn the worship of the servile mob 
To their corrupt and glaring idol fame, 
From virtue, trampled by its iron tread, 
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field 
With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside, 
To deeds of charitable intercourse 
And bare fulfillment of the common laws 
Of decency and prejudice, confines 
The struggling nature of his human heart. 
Is duped by their sold sophistry ; he sheds 
A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 
Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door 
The frightful waves are driven, — when his son 
Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion 
Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, 
Whose life is misery, and fear, and car,e ; 
Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil ; 
Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream 
Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze 
For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye 
Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene 
Of thousands like himself ; — he little heeds 

Rl 



38 QUEEN MAB. [V. 



The rhetoric of tyranny ; his hate 
Is quenchless as his wrongs ; he laughs to scorn 
The vain and bitter mockery of words, 
Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, 
And unrestrained but by the arm of power, 
That knows and dreads his enmity. 

The iron rod of penury still compels 

Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, 

And poison, with unprofitable toil, 

A life too void of solace to confirm 

The very chains that bind him to his doom. 

Nature, impartial in munificence, 

Has gifted man with all- subduing will. 

Matter, with all its transitory shapes. 

Lies subjected and plastic at his feet. 

That, weak from bondage tremble as they tread. 

How many a rustic Milton has passed by, 

Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, 

In unremitting drudgery and care ! 

How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 

His energies, no longer tameless then, 

To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 

How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 

Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 

Where only specks of tins|l, fixed in heaven 

To light the midnights ofnis native town ! 

Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : 
The wisest of the sages of the earth. 
That ever from the stores of reason drew 
Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, 
Were but a weak and inexperienced boy. 
Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued 
With pure desire and universal love, 
Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, 
Untainted passion, elevated will. 
Which death (who even would linger long in awe 
Within his noble presence, and beneath 
His changeless eyebeam,) might alone subdue. 
Him, every slave now dragging through the filth 
Of some corrupted city his sad life, 



QtJEJfiN MAB. 39 



Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense 
With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, 
Or madly rushing through all violent crime. 
To move the deep stagnation of his soul, — 
Might imitate an equal. 

But mean lust 
Has bound its chains so tight around the earth. 
That all within it but the virtuous man 
Is venal : gold or fame will surely reach 
The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 
But him of resolute and unchanging will ; 
Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, 
Nor the vile joys of tainted luxury, 
Can bribe to yield his elevated soul 
To tyranny or falsehood, though they wield 
With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. 

All things are sold : the very light of heaven 

Is venal ; earth's unsparing gifts of love. 

The smallest and most despicable things 

That lurk in the abysses of the deep. 

All objects of our life, — even life itself. 

And the poor pittance which the law allow 

Of liberty, — the fellowship of man, 

Those duties which his heart of human love 

Should urge him to perform instinctively, 

Are bought and sold as in a public mart 

Of undisguising selfishness, that sets 

On each its price, the stamp mark of her reign. 

Even love is sold : the solace of all woe 

Is turned to deadliest agony : — old age 

Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms. 

And youth's corrupted impulses prepare 

A life of horror from the blighting bane 

Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs 

From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 

All human life with hydra-headed woes. 

Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs 
Of outraged conscience ; for the slavish priest. 



40 QUEEN MAB. [v. 



Sets no great value on his hireling faith : 

A little passing pomp, some servile souls, 

Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, 

Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe 

To deck the triumph of their languid zeal. 

Can make him minister to tyranny. 

More daring crime requires a loftier meed : 

Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends 

His arms to murderous deeds, and steels his heart 

When the dread eloquence of dying men, 

Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, 

Assails that nature, whose applause he sells 

For the gross blessings of a patriot mob. 

For the vile gratitude of heartless kings. 

And for a cold world's good word, — viler still ! 

There is a nobler glory which survives 
Until our being fades, and, solacing 
All human care, accompanies its change ; 
Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 
And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 
Her footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 
Imbues her lineaments with dauntlessness. 
Even when, from power's avenging hand she takes 
Her sweetest, last, and noblest title — death ! 
— The consciousness of good, which neither gold 
Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, 
Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 
Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
Of imiversal happiness, the heart 
That beats with it in unison, the brain, 
Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change 
Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. 

This commerce of sincerest virtue needs 
No mediative signs of selfishness, — 
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, — 
No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; 
In just and equal measures all is weighed, 
One scale contains the sum of human weal, 
And one, the good man's heart. 



VI.] 



QUEEN MAB. 41 



How vainly seek 
The selfish for that happiness denied 
To aught but virtue ! felind and hardened, they, 
"Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 
Who covet power they know not how to use. 
And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give, — 
Madly they frustrate still their own designs ; 
And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy 
Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 
Pining regrets, and vain repentances, 
Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade 
Their valueless and miserable lives. 

But hoary-headed selfishness has felt 
Its death blow, and is tottering to the grave. 
A brighter morn awaits the human day, 
When every transfer of earth's natural gifts 
Shall be a commerce of good words and works ; 
When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame. 
The fear of infamy, disease, and woe, 
War with its million horrors, and fierce hell 
Shall live but in the memory of Time, 
Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start. 
Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 



VI. 

All touch, all eye, all ear, 
The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. 

O'er the thin texture of its frame, 
The varying periods painted changing glows. 

As on a summer even. 
When soul enfolding music floats around. 
The stainless mirror of the lake 
Reimages the eastern gloom, 
Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
With sunset's burnished gold. 

Then thus the Spirit spoke : 
It is a wild and miserable world ! 



42 QUEEN MAB. [vi. 



Thorny, and the full of care, 
Which every fiend can make his prey at will. 
Oh Fairy ! in the lapse of years, 

Is there no hope in store '? 

Will yon vast suns roll on 
Interminably, still illumining 
The night of so manj^ wretched souls, 

And see no hope for them 1 
Will not the universal Spirit e'er 
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven 1 

The Fairy calmly smiled 
In comfort, and kindling gleam of hope 

Suifused the Spirit's lineaments. 
Oh ! rest thee tranquil : chase those fearful doubts, 
Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, 
That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. 
Yes ! crime and misery are in yonder earth. 

Falsehood, mistake, and lust ; 

But the eternal world 
Contains at once the evil and the cure. 
Some eminent in virtue shall start up. 

Even in perversest time : 
The truth of their pure lips, that never die, 
Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath 

Of ever-living flame. 
Until the monster sting itself to death. 

How sweet a scene will earth become ! 
Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling place, 
S.ymphonious with the planetary spheres, '^ 

When man, with changeless nature coalescing, 
Will undertake regeneration's work. 
When its ungenial poles no longer point 

To the red and baleful sun 

That faintly twinkles there. 

Spirit ! on yonder earth, 
Falsehood now triumi^hs ; deadly power 
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth ! 

Madness and misery are there ! 
The happiest is most wretched ! yet confide, 
Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy. 
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. 



VI.] 



QUEEN MAB. 43 



Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn, 

And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, 

Which nature soon, with re-creating hand. 

Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. 

How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, 

How swift the step of reason's firmer tread. 

How calm and sweet the victories of life, 

How terrorless the triumph of the grave ! 

How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm. 

Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! 

How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar ! 

The weight of his exterminating curse. 

How light ! and his affected charity. 

To suit the pressure of the changing times, 

What palpable deceit .'—but for thy aid. 

Religion ! but for thee, prolific fiend, 

Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, 

And heaven with slaves ! 

Thou taintest all thou lookest upon ! the stars. 

Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, 

Were gods to the distempered playfulness 

Of thy untutored infancy ; the trees. 

The grass, the clouds, the mountains and the sea. 

All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly. 

Were gods ; the sun had homage, and the moon 

Her worshipper. Then thou becamest a boy. 

More daring in thy frenzies : every shape, 

Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild. 

Which from sensation's relics, fancy culls ; 

The spirit of the air, the shuddering ghost. 

The genii of the elements, the powers 

That give a shape to nature's varied works. 

Had life and faith in the corrupt belief 

Of thy blind heart : yet still thy youthful hands 

Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave 

Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain : 

Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene. 

Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride : 

Their everlasting and unchanging laws 

Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst 

Baffled and gloomy ; then thou didst sum up 



44 Q^EEN MAB. [vi. 



The elements of all that thou didst know ; 

The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, 

The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, 

The eternal orbs that beautify the night, 

The sunrise, and the setting of the moon. 

Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease. 

And all their causes, to an abstract point, 

Converging thou didst bend, and called it — God ! 

The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, 

The merciful, and the avenging God ! 

"Who, prototype of human misrule, sits 

High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, 

Even like an earthly king : and whose dread work. 

Hell gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves 

Of fate, whom he created, in his sport. 

To triumph in their torments when they fell ! 

Earth heard the name ; earth trembled, as the smoke 

Of his revenge ascended up to heaven. 

Blotting the constellations ; and the cries 

Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence 

And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds 

Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths 

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land ; 

Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear ; 

And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek 

Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel 

Felt cold in her torn entrails ! 

Religion ! thou wert then in manhood's prime : 

But age crept on : one God would not suffice 

For senile puerility ; thou framedst 

A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut 

Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend 

Thy wickedness had pictured, might afi'ord 

A plea for sating the unnatural thirst 

For murder, rapine, violence, and crime. 

That still consumed thy being, even when 

Thou heardest the step of fate ! that flames might light 

Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks 

Of parents dying on the pile that burned 

To light their children to thy paths, the roar 

Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries 



QUEEN MAB. 45 



Of thine apostles, loud Gommingling there, 
Might sate thine hungry ear 
Even on the bed of death ! 

But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs ', 
Thou art descending to the darksome grave, 
Unhonored and unpitied, but by those 
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds 
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun 
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night 
That long has lowered above the ruined world. 

Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 

Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused 

A spirit of activity and life, 

That knows no term, cessation, or decay ; 

That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 

Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, 

Awhile there slumbers., more than when the babe 

In the dim newness of its being feels 

The impulse of sublunary things, 

And all is wonder to unpractised sense : 

But, active, steadfast, and eternal, still 

Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars. 

Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, 

Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease ; 

And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly 

Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes 

Its undecaying battlements, presides, 

Apportioning with irresistible law 

The place each spring of its machine shall fill ; 

So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap 

Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven 

Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords 

Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner. 

Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock. 

All seems unlinked contingency and chance : 

No atom of this turbulence fulfills 

A vague and unnecessitated task, 

Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 

Even the minutest molecule of light. 

That in an April's sun-beam fleeting glows, 

b2 



46 QUEEN MAB. \yU 



Fulfills its destined, though invisible work, 

The universal Spirit guides ; nor less, 

When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, 

Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field. 

That, blind they there may dig each other's graves, 

And call the sad work — glory ; does it rule 

All passions : not a thought, a will, and act, 

No working of the tyrant's moody mind. 

Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast 

Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel. 

Nor the events enchaining every will. 

That from the depths of unrecorded time 

Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 

Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee, 

Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring 

Of life and death, of happiness and woe. 

Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene 

That floats before our eyes in wavering light 

Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison, 

Whose chains and massy walls 

We feel, but cannot see. 

Spirit of Nature ! all-suflicing power. 

Is ecessity ! thou mother of the world ! 

Unlike the God of human error, thou 

Requirest no prayers or praises ; the ca.price 

Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee 

Than do the changeful passions of his breast 

To thy unvarying harmony : the slave. 

Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world. 

And the good man, who lives, with virtuous pride. 

His being in the sight of happiness. 

That springs from his own works ; the poison-tree, 

Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, 

And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords 

A temple where the vows of happy love 

Are registered, are equal in thy sight : 

No love, no hate, thou cherishest ; revenge 

And favoritism, and worst desire of fame 

Thou knowest not ; all that the wide world contains 

Are but thy passive instruments, and thou 

Regardest them all with an impartial eye. 



QUEEN MAB. 47 



Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel, 
Because thou hast not human sense, 
Because thou art not human mind. 

Yes. when the sweeping storm of time 
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes 
And broken altars of the almighty fiend, 
Whose name usurps thy honors and the blood 
Through centuries clotted there, has floated down 
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 
Unchangeable ! A shrine is raised to thee 

Which, nor the tempest breath of time, 

Nor the interminable flood, 

Over earth's slight pageant rolling, 
Availeth to destroy, — 
The sensitive extension of the world, 

That wondrous and eternal fane, 
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, 
To do the will of strong necessity. 

And life, in multitudinous shapes. 
Still pressing forward where no term can be. 

Like hungry and unresting flame 
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength. 



VII. 



I was an infant when my mother went 

To see an atheist burned. She took me there ; 

The dark-robed priests were met around the pile ; 

The multitude was gazing silently : 

And as the culprit passed with dauntless mein. 

Tempered disdain, in his unaltering eye. 

Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth : 

The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs : 

His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon ; 

His death-pang' rent my heart ! the insensate mob 

Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. 

Weep not, child ! cried my mother, for that man 

Has said, there is no God. 



48 QUEEN MAB. [vil. 



There is no God ! 
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed : 
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, 
His ceaseless generations tell their tale ; 
Let every part depending on the chain 
That links it to the whole, point to the hand 
That grasps its term ! let every seed that falls 
In silent eloquence unfold its store 
of arguments ; infinity within, 
Infinity without, belie creation ; 
The exterminable spirit it contains 
Is Nature's only God ; but human pride 
Is skillful to invent most serious names 
To hide its ignorance. 

The name of God 
Has fenced about all crime with holiness, 
Himself the creature of his worshippers, 
Whose names, and attributes, and passions change, 
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, 
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, 
Still serving e'er the war-polluted world 
For desolation's watch- word ; whether hosts 
Stain his death-blushing chariot- wheels, as on 
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise 
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans ; 
Or countless partners of his power divide 
His tyranny to weakness ; or the smoke 
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness. 
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, 
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven 
In honor of his name ; or, last and worst, 
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age. 
And priests dare babble of a God of peace, 
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, 
Murdering the while, uprooting every germs 
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all. 
Making the earth a slaughter-house ! 

O Spirit through the sense 
By which thy inner nature was apprised 



VII.] 



QUEEN MAB. 49 



Of outward shews, vague dreams have rolled. 
And varied reminiscences have waked 

Tablets that never fade ; 
All things have been imprinted there, 
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, 
Even the unshapeless lineaments 
Of wild and fleeting visions 
Have left a record there 
To testify of earth. 

These are my empire, for to me is given 
The wonders of the human world to keep, 
And fancy's thin creations to endow 
"With manner, being, and reality ; 
Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams 
Of human error's dense and purblind faith, 
I will evoke, to meet thy questioning, 
Ahasuerus, rise ! 

A strange and woe-worn wight 
Arose beside the battlement. 

And stood unmoving there. 
His inessential figure cast no shade 

Upon the golden floor ; 
His sport and mien bore mark of many years. 
And chronicles of untold ancientness 
Were legible within his beamless eye : 

Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth : 
Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame ; 
The wisdom of old age was mingled there 
"With youth's primsoval dauntlessness ; 

And inexpressible woe, 
Chastened by fearless resignation, gave 
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. 

SPIRIT. 

Is there a God 1 

AHASUERUS. 

Is there a God 1 — aye, an almighty God, 

And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 

Was heard on earth ; earth shuddered at the sound ; 



60 QTTEEN MAB. [vil. 



The fiery-visaged firmament expressed 
Abhorrence and the grave of nature yawned 
To swallow all the dauntless and the good 
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves 
Survived, — cold-blooded slaves, who did the work 
Of tyrannous omnipotence ; whose souls 
No honest indignation ever urged 
To elevated daring, to one deed 
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute. 
The slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend, 
Gorgeous and vast : the costly altars smoked 
"With human blood, hideous paeans rung 
Thro' all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard 
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts 
Had raised him to his eminence and power, 
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime, 
And confident of the all-knowing one. 
These were Jehovah's words. 



From an eternity of idleness 
I, God, awoke ; in seven day's toil made earth 
From nothing ; rested, and created man : 
I placed him in a paradise, and there 
Planted the tree of evil, so that he 
Might eat and perish, and my soul procure 
Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn. 
Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth. 
All misery to my fame. The race of men 
Chosen to my honor, with impunity 
May sate the lust I planted in their heart. 
Here I command thee hence to lead them on. 
Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops 
Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood 
And make my name be dreaded through the land. 
Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe 
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, 
With every soul on this ungrateful earth 
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong, — even all 
Shall perish to fulfill the blind revenge 
(W^ch you, to men, call justice) of their God. 



QUEEN MAB. 61 



The murderer's brow 
Quivered with horror. 

God omnipotent, « 

Is there no mercy 1 must our punishment 
Be endless 1 will long ages toil away, 
And see no term 1 Oh, wherefore hast thou made 
In mockery and wrath this evil earth *? 
Mercy becomes the powerful — be but just : 

God ! repent and save. 

One way remains : 

1 will beget a son, and he shall bear 
The sins of all the world : he shaU arise 
In an unnoticed corner of the earth. 

And there shall die upon a cross, and purge 

The universal crime ; so that the few 

On whom my grace descends, those who are marked 

As vessels to the honor of their God, 

May credit this strange sacrifice, and save 

Their souls alive : millions shall live and die, 

Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name, ^ 

But unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 

Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, 

Such as the nurses frighten babes withal , 

These in a gulf of anguish and of flame. 

Shall curse their reprobation endlessly. 

Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, 

Even on their beds of torment, where they howl, 

My honor and the justice of their doom. 

w hat then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughta 

Of purity, with radiant genius bright. 

Or lit with human reason's earthly ray 1 

Many are called, but few will I elect. 

Do thou my bidding, Moses ! 

Even the murderer's cheek 
"Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lipa 
Scarce faintly uttered — O almighty one, 
I tremble and obey ! 

O Spirit ! centuries have set their seal 



52 QUEEN MAB. [vil. 



On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, 

Since the incarnate came : humbly he came, 

Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape 

Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard, 

Save by the rabble of his native town, 

Even as a parish demagogue. He led 

The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace 

In semblance ; but he lit within their souls 

The quenchless flamei of zeal, and blest the sword 

He brought on earth to satiate with the blood 

Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. 

At length his mortal irame was led to death. 

I stood beside him : on the torturing cross 

No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense ; 

And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed 

The massacres and miseries which his name 

Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried, 

Go ! go ! in mockery . 

A smile of godlike malice re-illumined 

His fading lineaments — I go, he cried, 

But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth 

. Eternally. The dampness of the grave 

Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, 
And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 
When I awoke, hell burned within my brain, 
Which staggered on its seat ; for all around 
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, 
Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them, 
And in their various attitudes of death 
My murdered children's mute and eyeless sculls 
Glared ghastily upon me. 

But my soul, 
From sight and sense of the polluting woo 
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer 
Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven. 
Therefore 1 rose, and dauntlessly began 
My lonely and unending pilgrimage. 
Resolved to wage unweariable war 
With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl 
Defiance at his impotence to harm 
Beyond the curse 1 bore. The very hand 



VII.] 



QUEEN MAB. 53 



That barred my passage to the peaceful grave 

Has crushed the earth to misery, and given 

Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. 

These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn 

Of weak, unstable, and precarious power ; 

Then preaching peace, as now they practice war. 

So, when they turned but from the massacre 

Of unoffending infidels, to quench 

Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 

That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal 

Froze every human feeling, as the wife 

Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel, 

Even while its hopes were dreaming of her love ; 

And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood 

Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war 

Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught waged, 

Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath; 

Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace. 

Pointed to victory ! When the fray was done. 

No remnant of the exterminated faith 

Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh, 

With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere 

That rotted on the half extinguished pile. 

Yes ! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe 

The sword of his revenge, when grace descended, 

Confirming all unnatural impulses, 

To sanctify their desolating deeds ; 

And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross 

O'er the unhappy earth : then shone the Sun 

On showers of gore from the upflashing steel 

Of safe assassination, and all crime 

Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, 

And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. 

Spirit ! no year of my eventful being 

Has passed unstained by crime and misery, [slaves 

Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his 

With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile 

The insensate mob, and while one hand was red 

With murder, feign to stretch the other out 

For brotherhood and peace ; and that they now 

Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds 



54 QUEEN MAB. [VIII. 



Are marked with all the narrowness and crime 

That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise ; 

Reason may claim our gratitude, who now 

Establishing the imperishable throne 

Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain 

The unprevailing malice of my foe, 

Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave 

Adds impotent eternities to pain. 

Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast 

To see the smiles of peace around them play, 

To frustrate, or to sanctify their doom. 

Thus have I stood,— through a wild waste of years 
Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 
Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined, 
Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse 
With stubborn and unalterable will, 
Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame 
Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 
A monument of fadeless ruin there ; 
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves 
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, 
As in the sun-light's calm it spreads 
Its worn and withered arms on high 
To meet the quiet of a summer's noon. 

The Fairy waved her wand : 
Ahasuerus fled 
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, 
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 
Flee from the morning beam ; 
The matter of which dreams are made 
Not more endowed with actual life 
Than this phantasmal portraiture 
Of wandering human thought. 



VIII. 

The present and the past thou hast beheld : 
It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn 



VIII.] 



QUEEN MAB. 55 



The secret of the future, — Time ! 
Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes. 
And from the cradles of eternity, 
Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep 
By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, 
Tear thou that gloomy shroud.— Spirit, behold 
Thy glorious destiny ! 

Joy to the Spirit came. 
Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil, 
Hope was seen beaming through the mist of fear ; 

Earth was no longer hell ; 
Love, freedom, health, had given 
Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, 

And all its pulses beat 
Symphonious to the planetary spheres : 

Then dulcet music swelled 
Concordant with the life-string of the soul : 
It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, 
Catching new life from transitory death. — 
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even. 
That wake the wavelets of the slumbering sea 
And dies on the creation of its breath, 
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits: 
Was the pure stream of feeling 
That sprung from these sweet notes. 
And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies 
With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 

Joy to the Spirit came, — 
Such joy as when a lover sees 
The chosen of his soul in happiness, 

And witnesses her peace 
Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, 

Sees her unfaded cheek 
Glow mantling in first luxury of health, 

Thrills with her lovely eyes. 
Which like two stars amid the heaving main 

Sparkle through liquid bliss. 

Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen ; 



66 QUEEN MAB. [vill. 



I will not call the ghost of ages gone 
To unfold the frightful secret of its lore; 

The present now is past, 
And those events that desolate the earth 
Have faded from the memory of Time, 
"Who dares not give relative to that 
Whose being I annul. To me is given 
The wonders of the human world to keep, 
Space, matter, time a,nd mind. Futurity 
Expose now its treasure : let the sight 
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. 
O human Spirit ! spur thee to the goal 
Where virtue fixes universal peace, 
And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, 
A light-house o'er the wild of dreary waves. 

The habitable earth is full of bliss ; 

Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled 

By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 

Where matter dare not vegetate or live, 

But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 

Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; 

And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles 

Ruffle the placid ocean deep that rolls 

Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand. 

Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet 

To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves 

And melodize with man's blest nature there. 

Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 

Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed 

A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, 

Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love 

Broke on the sultry silentness alone, 

Now teem with countless rills and shady woods 

Corn-fields, and pastures, and white cottages : 

And where the startled wilderness beheld 

A savage conqueror standing in kindred blood, 

A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs. 

The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 

Whilst shouts and bowlings through the desert rang, 



QUEEN MAB. 57 



Sloping and smooth, the daisy spangled lawn, 
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles 
To see a babe before his mother's door, 

Sharing his morning's meal 
With the green and golden basilisk 

That comes to lick his feet. 

Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail 
Has seen above the illimitable plain, 
Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 
Whilst still no land to gi eet the wanderer spread 
Its shadowy mountains on the sun- bright sea. 
Where the loud roarings of the tempest- waves 
So long have mingled with the gusty wind 
In melancholy loneliness, and swept 
The desert of those ocean solitudes, 
But vocal to the sea bird's harrowing shriek, 
The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, 
Now to the sweet and many mingling sounds 
Of kindliest human impulses respond. 
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem 
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss. 
Whilst greenwoods overcanopy the wave, 
Which, like a toil-worn laborer, leaps to shore, 
To meet the kisses of the flowerets there. 

All things are recreated, and the flame 
Of consentaneous love inspires all life : 
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 
To myriades who still grow beneath her care. 
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness : 
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale 
Her virtues, and diffuses them all abroad : 
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream : 
No storm deforms the beaming brow of heaven, 
Nor scatters in the freshness of its pride 
The foliage of the ever verdant trees ; 
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair. 
And autumn proudly bears her matron grace. 
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring. 
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit 
Reflects its tint and blushes into love. 



58 QUEEN MAB. [vill. 



The lion now forgets to thirst for blood : 

There mighty you see him sporting in the sun 

Beside the dreadless kid ; his claws are sheathed, 

His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made 

His nature as the nature of a lamb. 

Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane 

Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows ; 

All bitterness is past ; the cup of joy 

Unmiugled mantle's to the goblet's brim, 

And coui-ts the thirsty lips it fled before. 

But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know 
INIore misery, and dream more joys than all ; 
Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast 
To mingle with a loftier instinct there. 
Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, 
Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each ; 
"Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 
The burthen or the glory of the earth ; 
He chief perceives the change, his being notes 
The gradual renovation, and defines 
Each movement of its progress on his mind. 

Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 

Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil. 

Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost 

Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow. 

Shrank with the plants and darkened with the night ; 

His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 

Insensible to courage, truth, or love. 

His stunted stature and imbecile frame, 

Marked him for some abortion of the earth, 

Fit compeer of the bears that roamed aroimd. 

Whose habits and enjoyments were his own; 

His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe : 

Whose meagre wants but scantily fulfilled. 

Apprised him ever of the joyless length 

Which his short being wretchedness had reached ; 

His death a pang, which famine, cold, and toil 

Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark 

Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought ; 

All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 



VIII.] QUEEN MAB. 5$* 



Could wreak on the infringers of her law ; 

One curse alone was spared — the name of G od. 

Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day 

With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, 

Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere 

Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed 

Unnatural vegetation, where the land 

Teemed with all earthquake, tempest, and disease, 

Was man a nobler being ; slavery 

Had crushed him to his country's blood stained dust ; 

Or he was bartered for the fame of power. 

Which, all internal impulses destroying. 

Makes human will an article of trade ; 

Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, 

And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound 

Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work 

Of all polluting luxury and wealth, 

Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads 

The long protracted fullness of their woe : 

Or he was led to legal butchery. 

To turn to worms beneath that burning sun. 

Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, 

And priests first traded with the name of God. 

Even where the milder zone afforded man 

A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 

Blighting his being with unnumbered ills. 

Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth till late 

Availed to arrest its progress, or create 

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved 

Her snowy standard o'er this favored clime : 

There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, 

The mimic of surrounding misery. 

The jackal of ambition's lion rage, 

The blood-hound of religion's hungry zeal. 

Here now the human being stands adorning 

This loveliest earth, with taintless body and mind ! 

Blest from his birth with all bland impulses. 

Which gently in his noble bosom wake 

All kincSy passions and all pure desires. 

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing. 



60 QUEEN MAB. [iX. 



Which from the exhaustless love of human weal 

Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise 

In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 

With self-enshrined eternity', that mocks 

The unprevailing hoariness of age, 

And man once fleeting o'er the transient scene 

Swift as an unremembered vision stands 

Immortal upon earth : no longer now 

He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, 

And horribly devours his mangled flesh. 

Which still avenging nature's broken law, 

Kindled all putrid humors in his frame, 

All evil passions, and all vain belief, 

Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind. 

The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. 

No longer now the winged inhabitants, 

That in th© woods their sweet lives sing away, 

Flee from the form of man ; but gather round, 

And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 

Which little children stretch in friendly sport 

Towards these dreadless partners of their play. 

All things are void of terror : man has lost 

His terrible prerogative, and stands 

An equal amidst equals : happiness 

And science dawn though late upon the earth ; 

Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame ; 

Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, — 

Reason and passion cease to combat there ; 

Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend 

Their all subduing energies, and wield 

The sceptre of a vast dominion there ; 

Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends 

Its force to the omnipotence of mind, 

Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth 

To decorate its paradise of peace. 



IX. 

O HAPPY Earth ! reality of heaven ! 

To which those restless souls that ceaselessly 



IX.] 



QUEEN BIAB. 61 



Throng through the human universe, aspire ; 
Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 
Thou glorious prize of blindly working will ! 
Whose rays diffused throughout ail space and time, 
V erge to one point and blend forever there : 
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place ! 
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, 
Langour, disease, and ignorance, dare not come: 
O happy Earth,— reality of heaven ! 

Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams. 
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined 
Ihose rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss 
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. 
Thou art the end of all desire and will. 
The product of all action : and the souls 
That by the paths of an aspiring change 
Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, 
There rest from the eternity of toil 
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness. 

Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear : 

That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, 

So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 

Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, 

That for milleniums had withstood the tide 

Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand 

Across that desert where their stones survived 

The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. 

Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp. 

Was but the mushroom of a summer day, 

That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust : 

lime was the king of earth ; all things gave way 

-before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, 

The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, 

That mocked his fury and prepared his fiiU. 

1 et slow and gradual dawned the morn of love ; 

Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene. 

Till from its native heaven they roiled away : 

First, crime, triumphant o'er all hope careered 

U nblushing, undisguising, bold, and strong : 



62 QUEEN MAB. IX.] 



Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's attributes, 
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, 
Till done by her own venomous sting to death 
She left the mortal world without a law, 
No longer fettering passion's fearless wing. 
Nor searing reason with the brand of God. 
Then steadil}^ the happy ferment worked : 
Reason was free : and wild though passion went 
Through tangled glens and wood embosomed«aeads, 
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers. 
Yet like the bee returning to her queen. 
She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, 
Who, meek and sober, kissed the sportive child, 
No longer trembling at the broken rod. 

Mild was the slow necessity of death : 

The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp, 

Without a groan, almost without a fear. 

Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 

And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 

The deadly germs of languor and disease 

Died in the human frame, and purity 

Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers. 

How vigorous then the athletic form of age ! 

How clear its open and unwrinkled brow ! 

Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care, 

Had stamped the seal of grey deformity 

On all the mingling lineaments of time. 

How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 

AVhich meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace, 

Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name. 

And elevated will, that journeyed on 

Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness, 

With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 

Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self. 

And rivets with sensation's softest tie 

The kindred sympathies of human souls. 

Needed no fetters of tyrannic law : 

Those delicate and timid impulses 

In nature's primal modesty arose, 

And with undoubting confidence disclosed 



QUEEN MAB. 63 



The growing longings of its dawning love. 

Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, 

That virtue of the cheaply virtuous. 

Who pride themselves in senselessness in frost, 

No longer prostitution's venomed bane 

Poisoned the springs of happiness and life ; 

Woman and man, in confidence and love. 

Equal, and free, and pure, together trod 

The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more 

Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet. 

Then, where through distant ages, long in pride 
The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked 
Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, 
A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw 
Year after year their stones upon the field. 
Wakening a lonely echo ; and the leaves 
Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower 
Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook 
In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower 
And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear. 

Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles 

The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung : 

It were a sight of awfulness to see 

The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 

So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal ! 

Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 

A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 

To-day, the breathing marble glows above 

To decorate its memory, and tongues 

Are busy of its life; to-merrow, worms 

In silence and in darkness seize their prey. 

Within the massy prison's mouldering courts. 
Fearless and free the ruddy children jjlayed, 
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows 
With the green ivy and the red wall-flower. 
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom ; 
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron. 
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 
That mingled slowly with their native earth : 



64 QITEEN MAB. [iX. 



There the broad beam of day, which feebly once 

Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 

With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone 

On the pure smiles of infant playfulness : 

No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair 

Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes 

Of ivy -fingered winds and gladsome birds 

And merriment were resonant around. 

These ruins soon left not a wreck behind : 
Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, 
To happier shapes were moulded, and became 
Ministrant to all blissful impulses : 
Thus human things were perfected, and earth, 
Even as a child beneath its mother's love, 
Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew 
Fairer and nobler with each passing year. 

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene 
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past 
Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done : 
Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, 
With all the fear and all the hope they bring, 
My spells are past : the present now recurs, 
Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. 

Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course, 

Let virtue teach you firmly to pursue 

The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 

For birth, and life, and death, and that strange state 

Before the naked soul has found its home, 

All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 

The restless wheels of being on their way. 

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 

Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal. 

For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 

Of outward shows, whose inexperienced shape 

New modes of passion to its frame may lend ; 

Life is its state of action, and the store 

Of all events is aggregated there 

That variegated the eternal universe ; 



QUEEN MAB, 65 



Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 

That leads to azure isles and beaming skies 

And happy regions of eternal hope. 

Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: 

Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 

Though frost may blight the freshness of its bloom, 

Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, 

To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower, 

That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens. 

Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 

Fear not, then. Spirit, death's disrobing hand, 
So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns ; 
'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. 
Death is no foe to virtue : Earth has seen 
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom. 
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there. 
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed 1 
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still. 
When to the moonlight walk by Henry led, 
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death 1 
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast. 
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed. 
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, 
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore 1 
Never : but bravely bearing on, thy will 
Is destined an eternal war to wage 
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
The germs of misery from the human heart. 
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime. 
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease : 
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy 
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, 
When fenced by power and master of the world. 
Thou art sincere and good ; of resolute mind. 
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 



66 QUEEN MAB. [iX. 



Of passion lofty, pure, and unsubdued. 
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, 
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon 
Which thou hast now received : virtue shall keep 
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 
And many days of beaming hope shall bless 
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. 
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy, 
"Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
Light, life, and rapture from thy smile. 

The Fairy waves her wand of charm. 
Speechless with bliss the spirit mounts the car, 

That rolled beside the battlement, 
Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 

Again the enchanted steeds were yoked. 

Again the burning wheels inflame 
The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way. 

Fast and far the chariot flew : 

The vast and fiery globes that rolled 

Around the Fairy's palace-gate 
Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared 
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
That there attendant on the solar power 
With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. 
Earth floated then below : 

The chariot paused a moment there ; 
The Spirit then descended : 
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil. 
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done. 
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven. 

The Body and the Soul united then, 
A gentle start convulsed lanthe's frame : 
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed ; 
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained : 
She looked around in wonder, and beheld 
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, 
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love. 

And the bright beaming stars 

That through the casement shone. 



NOTES. 



I. Page 13. 

The sun's unclouded orb 

Rolled through the black concave. 

Beyond our atmosphere, the sun would appear a rayless orb 
of fire in the midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of 
light on earth is owing to the refraction of the rays by the 
atmosphere, and their reflection from other bodies. Light 
consists either of vibrations propagated through a subtle me- 
dium, or of numerous minute particles repelled in all directions 
from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly exceeds that of 
any substance with which we are acquainted : observations on 
the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have demonstrated that light 
takes up no more than eight minutes and seven seconds in pass- 
ing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 95.000,000 of miles. 
Some idea may be gained of the immense distance of the fixed 
stars, when it is computed that many years would elapse be- 
fore light could reach this earth from the nearest of them ; yet 
in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is at a 
distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the 
earth. 

I. Page 13. 

Whilst round the chariot's way 
Innumerable systems rolled. 

The plurality of worlds, the indefinite immensity of the uni- 
verse is a most awful subj ect of contemplation . He who rightly 
feels its mystery and grandeur, is in no danger of seduction 



68 NOTES. 

from the falsehoods of reUgious systems, or of deifying the 
principle of the universe. It is impossible to beUeve that the 
spirit that pervades this infinite machine begat a son upon the 
body of a Jewish woman ; or is angered at the consequences of 
that necessity, which is a synonyme of itself. All that misera- 
ble tale of the Devil and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the 
childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcileable 
with the knowledge of the stars. _ 

The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant trom 
the earth, and they are probably proportionably distant from 
each other. By a calculation of the velocity of hght, byrius is 
supposed to be at least 54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth.* 
That which appears only like a thin, silvery cloud, streaking 
the heaven, is in effect composed of innumerable clusters ot 
suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating num- 
bers of planets that revolve around them. Milhons and mil- 
lions of suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumera- 
ble worlds, yet calm, regular, and harmonious, aU keeping the 
paths of immutable necessity . 

IV. Page 32. 

These are the hired bravoes who defend 
The tyrant's throne. 

To employ murder as a means of justice, is an idea which a 
man of an enlightened mind wiU not dwell upon with pleasure. 
To march forth in rank and file, with all the pomp of stream- 
ers and trumpets, for the purpose of shooting at our feUow-men 
as a mark ; to inflict upon them all the variety of wound and 
anguish; to leave them weltering in their blood ; to wander 
over the field of desolation, and count the number of the dying 
and the dead,— are employments which in thesis we may main- 
tain to be necessary, but which no good man will contemplate 
with gratulation and delight. A battle we suppose is won ;— 
thus truth is established ;— thus the cause of justice is con- 
firmed ! It surely requires no common sagacity to discern the 
connection between this immense heap of calamities, and the 
assertion of truth, or the maintenance of justice. 

Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the calam- 

* See Nicholson's EncyclopsBdia, art. Light. 



NOTES. ggr 

nity sit unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom 
the fury of the storm is directed, are, for the most part, per- 
T.'jJf have been trepanned into the service, or who are 
dragged unwilhngly from their peaceful homes into the field 
ot battle. A soxdier IS a man whose business it is to kill those 
who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of 

Questiro/fh'''^^' r'.'\i^^^^^^^'^ ^^^ ^^^°^^ «f t^^ abstract 
question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that 
the solaier should not be a depraved and unnatural bein^. 

10 tiiese more serious and momentous considerations it mav 
be proper to add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the 
mihtary character. ^ Its first constituent is obedience: a sol- 
dier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a ma- 
chine ; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of 
dogmatism, swaggering, and self consequence; he is like the 
K 1^/ "" showman, who, at the very time he is made to 
strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly 
^?hZ.ffr^ assume the most insignificant gesture, advance 
either to the right or left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor. 

Godwin's Enquirer, Essay v. 
-^ I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of 
my abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest it 
never again may be depictured so vividly. This opportunity 
oblivion^^ ^^^ "^""^ ^''^'' '^'^^ ^^'^''^ ^^ rescuing it from 

FALSEHOOD AND VICE. 

A DIALOGUE. 

Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones 
J. hear a famished nation's groans, 
And hugged the wealth wrung from' the woe 
Ihat makes its eyes and veins o'erflow. 
Those thrones, high built upon the heans 
Of bones where frenzied famine sleeps," 
Where slavery wields her scourge of iron, 

ited with mankind's unheeded gore. 
And war's mad fiends the scene environ 

Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, 
T here Vice and Falsehood took their stand. 
High raised above the unhappy land. 



70 Notfis* 



FALSEHOOD. 



Brother ! arise from the dainty fare, 

Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow : 
A finer feast for thine hungry ear 

Is the news that I bring of human woe . 



And, secret one, what hast thou done, 

To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me 1 

I, whose career through the blasted year. 
Has been tracked by despair and agony. 

FALSEHOOD. 

"What have I done ! 1 have torn the robe 

From baby Truth's unsheltered form, 

And round the desolated globe 

Borne safely the bewildering charm : 

My tyrant slaves to a dungeon floor 
Have bound the fearless innocent, 

And streams of fertilizing gore 
Flow from her bosom's hideous rent, 
Which this unfailing dagger gave .... 

I dread that blood ! — no more — this day 

Is ours, though her eternal ray 
Must shine upon our grave. 

Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given 

To thee the robe I stole from heaven, 

Thy shape of ugliness and fear 

Had never gained admission here. 



And know, that had I disdained to toil, 
But sat in my loathsome cave the while. 
And ne'er to these hateful sons of heaven, 
GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER given 1 
Hadst thou with all thine art essayed 

One of thy games then to have played, 

With all thine overweening boast, 



NOTES. 71 



Falsehood 1 I tell thee thou hadst lost : — 

Yet wherefore this dispute 1 — we tend, 

Fraternal to one common end : 

In this cold grave beneath my feet, 

Will our hope, our fears, and our labors meet. 

FALSEHOOD. 

I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth ; 

She smothered Reason's babes in their birth ; 

But dreaded their mother's eye severe, — 

So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear, 

And loosed her blood-hounds from the den .... 

They started from dreams of sla^ughtered men. 

And by the light of her poison eye, 

Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully ; 

The dreadful stench of her torches flare. 

Fed with human fat, polluted the air ! 

The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries 

Of the many-mingling miseries. 

As on she trod, ascended high 

And trumpeted my victory i — 

Brother, tell what thou hast done. 



I have extinguished the noon-day sun, 
In the carnage smoke of battles won : 
Famine, murder, hell, and power. 
Were glutted in that glorious hour 
Which searchless fate had stamped for me 

With the seal of her security 

For the bloated wretch on yonder throne 

Commanded the bloody fray to rise : 
Like me he joyed at the stifled moan 

Wrung from a nation's miseries ; 
While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled. 
In ecstasies of malice smiled . 
They thought 'twas theirs, — ^but mine the deed ! 
Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed, 
Ten thousand victims madly bleed. 
They dream that tyrants goad them there 



7^ Notes. 



With poisonous war to taint the air : 
These tyrants on their beds of thorn, 

Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame, 

And with their gains to lift my name, 
Restless they plan from night to morn ; 

I — I do all ; without my aid 

Thy daughter, that relentless maid. 

Could never o'er a death-bed urge 

The fury of her venomed scourge. 

FALSEHOOD. 

Brother, well : — the world is ours ; 

And whether thou or I have won, 
The pestilence expectant lowers 

On all beneath yon blasted sun. 
Our joys, our toils, our honors meet 
In the milk-white and stormy winding sheet : 
A short-lived hope, unceasing care. 
Some heartless scraps of godly care, 
A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep 
Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep, 
A tyrant's dream, a coward's start. 
The ice that clings to a priestly heart, 
A judge's fro^vn, a courtier's smile, 
Make the great whole for which we toil; 
And, brother, whether thou or I 
Have done the work of misery. 
It little boots ; thy toil and pain. 
Without my aid were more than vain : 
And but for thee I ne'er had sat 
The guardian of heaven's palace gate. 

V. Page 35. 

Even as the leaves 
Which the keen frost wind of the waning year 
Has scattered on the forest soil. 

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found 
Now green in youth now withering on the ground ; 
Another race the following spring supplies ; 



NOTES. 73 



They fall successive, and successive rise : 

So generations in their course decay ; 

So flourish these, when those are past away. 

Pope^s Homer. 

V. Page 86. 

The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and king. 

When the wide ocean maddening whirlwinds sweep, 

And heave the billows of the boiling deep. 

Pleased we from land the reeling bark survey, 

And rolling mountains of the watery way. 

Not that we joy another's woes to see, 

But to reflect that we ourselves are free. 

So, the dread battle raged in distant fields. 

Ourselves secure, a secret pleasure yields. 

But what more charming than to gain the height 

Of true philosophy 1 What pure delight 

From Wisdom's citadel to view below, 

Deluded mortals, as they wandering go 

In quest of happiness ! ah, blindly weak ! 

For fame, for vain nobility they seek ; 

Labor for happy treasures, night and day, 

And pant for power and magisterial sway. 

Oh, wretched mortals ! souls devoid of light. 
Lost in the shades of intellectual night ! 

Dr. Bushhy^s Lucretius. 

V. Page a7. 

And statesmen boast 
Of wealth. 

There is no real wealth but the labor of man. Were the 
mountains of gold, and the valleys of silver, the world would 
not be one grain of corn the richer ; no one comfort would be 
added to the human race. In consequence of our consideration 
for the precious metals, one man is enabled to heap to himself 
luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of his neighbor ; a 
system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease 
and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes 

Cl 



74 NOTES. 



of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself 
as the promoter of his country's prosperity, who employs a 
number of hands in the manufacture of articles avowedly desti- 
tute of use, or subiervient only to the unhallowed cravings of 
luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the 
peasants of his neighborhood in building his palaces, until 
**7«m pauca aratro jugera regice moles rdincjuunt,^^* flatters 
himself that he has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to 
the impulses of vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce 
the same apology for its continuance ; and many a fete has 
been given, many a woman has eclipsed her beauty by her 
dress, to benefit the laboring poor, and to encourage trade. 
Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, 
whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society 1 The poor 
are set to labor, — for what '? Not the food for which they fam- 
ish ; not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen 
by the cold of their miserable hovels ; not those comforts of 
civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable 
than the meanest savage ; oppressed as he is by all its insidious 
evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its innumer- 
able benefits assiduously exhibited before him ; no : for the 
pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false 
pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evi- 
dence is afforded of the wide, extended, and radical mistakes 
of civilized man than this fact ; those arts which are essential 
to his very being a,re held in the greatest contempt, emplo}^- 
ments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness ;t the 
jeweller, the toyman, the actor, gains fame and wealth by the 
exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator 
of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, 
struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that 
famine which, but for his unceasing exertions, would annihi- 
late the rest of mankind. 

I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine 
of the natural equality of man. The question is not concern- 
ing its desirableness, but its practicability ; so far as it is practi- 
cable, it is desirable. That state of human society which ap- 
proaches nearer to an equal partition of its benefits and evils 

* These piles of royal structure, will soon leave but few acres 
for the plough, 
t See Kosseau, "L'Inegalite parmi les Hommes," note 7. 



JNfOT'ES. ^b 



should, cceteris paribus,'^ be preferred : but so long as we con- 
ceive that a wanton expenditure of human labor, not for the 
necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of society, but 
for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members, is de- 
fensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to 
approximate to the redemption of the human race. 

Labor is required for physical, and leisure for moral im- 
provement : from the former of these advantages the rich, and 
from the latter the poor, by the inevitable conditions of their 
respective situations, are precluded. A state which should 
combine the advantages of both, would be subjected to the 
evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health or vigor- 
ous intellect, is but half a man ; hence it follows, that, to sub- 
ject the laboring classes to unnecessary labor, is wantonly de- 
priving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement ; 
and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the 
disease, lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is ren- 
dered an intolerable burthen. 

English reformers exclaim against sinecures, — but the true 
pension-list is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors : wealth is 
a power usurped by the few to compel the many to labor for 
their benefit. The laws which support this system derive their 
force from the ignorance and credulity of its victims : they are 
the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who 
are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by the 
loss of all real comfort. 

The commodities that substantially contribute to the sub- 
sistence of the human species form a very short catalogue — 
they demand from us but a slender portion of industry. If 
these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the spe- 
cies of man would be continued. If the labor necessarily re- 
quired to produce them were equitably divided among all the 
poor, and still more, if it were equitably divided among all, 
each men's share of labor would be light, and his portion of 
leisure would be ample. There was a time when this leisure 
would have been of small comparative value : it is to be hoped 
that the time will come when it will be applied to the most 
important purposes. Those hours which are not required for 
the production of the necessaries of life, may be devoted to the 
cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of 

* Making allowances on both sides. 



76 NOTfiS. 



knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new 
and more exquisite sources of enjoyment. 

********** 

It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and 
oppression should subsist, before a period of cultivated equality 
could subsist. Savages perhaps would never have been excited 
to the discovery of truth and the invention of art, but by the 
narrow motives which such a period affords. But, surely, after 
the savage state has ceased, and men have set out in the glori- 
ous career of discovery and invention, monopoly and oppression 
cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state 
of barbarism. — Godwin's Enquirer, Essay II. See also Pol. 
Jus,, Book VIII., ch. 11. 

It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the con- 
veniences of a civilized life might be produced, if society would 
divide the labor equally among its members, by each individual 
being employed in labor two hours during the day. 

V. Page 37. 

Or religion 
Drives his wife raving mad. 

I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, 
and the mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian re- 
ligion has goaded to incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I 
believe, within the experience of every physician. 

For some the approach of Death and Hell to stay, 
Their parents, friends, and country will betray. 

Dr. Bushby^s Lucretius. 

V. Page 39. 

Even love is sold. 

Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the des- 
potism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern 
the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the 
clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to 
subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inev- 



NOTES. 77 



itably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love 
■withers under constraint : its very essence is liberty : it is com- 
patible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear ; it is there 
most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in 
confidence, equality, and unreserve. 

How long then ought the sexual connection to last 1 what 
law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should 
limit its durations 1 A husband and wife ought to continue so 
long united as they love each other : any law which should 
bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of 
their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the 
most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of 
the right of private judgment should that law be considered, 
which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite 
of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and c.">pacity 
for improvement of the human mind ! And by so much would 
the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable Jhan those 
of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more 
dependant on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and 
less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object. 

The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal 
savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unen- 
lightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggravation 
of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have 
admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics, 
as of all other sciences ; and that the fanatical idea of morti- 
fying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have 
heard indeed an ignorant collegian adduce in favor of Chris- 
tianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling !* 

But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human 
unions and disunions ; if the worthiness of every action is to 
be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is cal- 
culated to produce, then the connection of the sexes is so long 

* The first Christian Emperor made a law by which seduction 
was punished with death; if the femnle pleaded her own consent, 
she was also punished with death: if the parents endeavoured to 
screen the criminals, they also were banished, and their estates con- 
fiscated : the slaves who mighf be accessory were burned alive, or 
forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal love 
were involved in the consequences of the sentence. — Oibbon's Decline 
and Fall, Src, vol. ii. page 210. See also for the hatred of the pri- 
mitive Christians to love, and even marriage, page 269. 



78 NOTES. 



sacred as it cob tributes to the comfort of the parties, and is 
naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. 
There is nothing immoral in this separation. — Constancy has 
nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it con- 
fers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in propor- 
tion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the 
object of its indiscreet choice — Love is free : to promise for- 
ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise 
to believe the same creed ! such a vow, in both cases, precludes 
us from all enquiry. The language of the votarist is this: 
The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many oth- 
ers ; the creed 1 now profess may be a mass of errors and ab- 
surdities : but I exclude myself from all future information as 
to the amiability of the one, and the truth of the other, resol- 
ving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is 
this the language of delicacy and reason 1 Is the love of such 
a frigid heart of more worth then its belief^ 

The present system of constraint does no more, in the ma- 
jority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. 
Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom 
they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of 
their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they 
are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare 
of their mutual offspring : those of less generosity and refine- 
ment openly avow their disappointment, and linger out the 
remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a 
state of incurable bickering and hostility. The early educa- 
tion of their children takes its color from the squabbles of the 
parents ; they are nursed in a systematic school of ill-humor, 
violence, and falsehood. Had they been suifered to p^rt at the 
moment when indifi'erence rendered their union irksome, they 
would have been spared many years of misery : they would 
have connected themselves more suitably, and would have 
found that happiness in the society of more congenial partners, 
which is forever denied them by the despotism of marriage. 
They would have been, separately, useful and happy members 
of society, who, whilst united, were miserable, and rendered 
misanthropical bj^ misery. The conviction that wedlock is in- 
dissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to the 
perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all 
the little tj'-rannies of domestic life, when they know that their 
victim is without appeal. If this connection were put on a 



NOTES. 79 



rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper 
would terminate in separation, and would cheek this vicious 
/and dangerous propensity. 

/ Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its 
accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than hav- 
ing followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with 
fury from the comforts and sympai:hifs of society. It is less 
venial than murder ! and the punishment which is inflicted on 
her v/ho deatroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than 
the lif^ of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irre- 
vocably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of un- 
erring nature ! — society declares war against her, pitiless and 
etenuil war : she must be the tame slave, she must make no 
reprisals ; theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of 
endurance. She lives a life of infamy : the loud and bitter 
laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long 
and lingering disease : yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, 
she the froward and untameable child, — and society, forsooth, 
the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion 
from her undefiled bosom ! Society avenges herself on the 
criminals of her own creation ! she is employed in anathema- 
tizing the vice to-day, which yesterday she was the most zeal- 
ous to teach. Thus is formed one-tenth part of the population 
of London : meanwhile the evil is two-fold. Young men, ex- 
cluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of 
modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious 
and miserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite 
and delicate sensibilities, whose existence, cold-hearted world- 
lings have denied ; annihilating all genuine passion, and de- 
basing that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity 
and devotedness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a 
hideous wreck of humanity'; idiocy and diseases become per- 
petuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations 
suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity 
is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to na- 
tural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality ; it strikes 
at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than 
half cf the human race to misery, that some few may monopo- 
lize according to liiw. A system could not have been devised 
more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage. 

I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and 
natural arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by 



80 . NOTES. 



no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous : 
on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of a parent to a 
child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked 
above all others with generosity and self-devotion. But this is 
a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss That 
which will result from the abolition of marriage, will be na- 
tural and right, because choice and change will be exempted 
from restraint. 

In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a 
practical code of misery and servitude : the genius of human 
happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God. 
ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would 
morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her 
own disgusting image, should she look in the mirror of nature. 



VI. Page 42. 

To the red and baleful sun 
That faintly twinkles there. 

The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, in its 
present state of obliquity, points. It is exceedingly probable, 
from many considerations, that this obliquity will gradually 
diminish, until the equator coincides with the ecliptic ; the 
nights and days will then become equal on the earth through- 
out the year, and probably the seasons also. There is no 
great extravagance in presuming that the progress of the per- 
pendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the progress of in- 
tellect ; or that there should be a perfect identity between the 
moral and physical improvement of the human species. It is 
certain that wisdom is not compatible with disease, and that, 
in the present state of the climates of the earth, health, in the 
true and comprehensive sense of the word, is out of the reach 
of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us that the earth is now 
in its progress, and that the poles are every year becoming 
more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong 
evidence afforded by the history of mythology, and geological 
researches, that some event of this nature has taken place 
already, affords a strong presumption that this progress is not 
merely an oscillation, as has been surmised by some late as- 



NOTES, 81 



tronomers.* Bones of animals, peculiar to the torrid zone, 
have been found in the north of Siberia, and on the banks of 
the river Ohio. Plants have been found in the fossil state in 
the interior of Germany, which demand the present climate of 
Hindostan for their production.! — The researches of M. Bailly:{: 
establish the existence of a people who inhabited a tract of 
land in Tartarv, 49 degrees north latitude, of" greater antiquity 
than either the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldean, from 
whom these nations derived their sciences and theology. We 
find, from the testimony of ancient writers, that Britain, Ger- 
many, and France, were much colder than at present and that 
their great rivers were annually frozen over. Astronomy 
teaches us also, that since this period the obliquity of the 
earth's position has been considerably diminished. 

VI. Page 45. 

No atom of this turbulence fulfills 
A vague and unnecessitated task, 
Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 

Two instances will serve to render more sensible to us the 
principle here laid down ; we will borrow one from natural, the 
other from moral philosophy. In a whirlwind of dust raised 
by an impetuous wind, however confused it may appear to our 
eyes : in the most dreadful tempest excited by opposing winds, 
which convulse the waves, there is not a single particle of dust or 
of water that is pla^ced by chance, that has not its sufficient cause 
for occupying the situation in which it is, and which does not 
rigorously act in the mode it should act. A geometrician who 
knew equally the difi'erent powers which operate in both cases, 
and the properties of the particles which are propelled, would 
shew that according to the given causes, each particle acts pre- 
cisely as it should act, and cannot act otherwise than it does. 

In those terrible convulsions which sometimes agitate political 
socities, and which frequently bring on the overthrow of an em- 
pire, there is not a single action, a single word, a single thought, 

* Lnplace, Systeme du Monde. 

t Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de THomme, vol. ii. 
p. 41)6. 
I Letters sur les Scienees, a Voltaire. Bailly. 

c2 



82 NOTES. 



a single volition, a single passion in the agents, which occur in 
the revolution as destroyers, or as victims, >yhich is not neces- 
sary, which does not act as it should act, which does not infal- 
libly produce the effects which it should produce, according to 
the place occupied by these agents in the moral whirlwind. 

This would appear evident to an intelligence which would be 
in a state to seize and appreciate all the actions and reactions 
of the minds and bodies of those who contribute to this revolu- 
tion. System of Nature ^ vol. i. 

VI. Page 46. 
Necessity ! thou mother of the world. 

He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means that, con- 
templating the events which compose the moral and material 
universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain 
of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other 
place than it does occupy, or aet in any other place than it 
does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience 
of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the opera- 
tions of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and 
the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are 
therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit 
that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action. 
Motive is, to voluntary action in human mind, what cause is 
to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, as ap- 
plied to mind, is analogous to the word chance, as applied to 
matter : they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the 
conjunction of antecedents and consequents. 

Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act precisely 
as he does act : in the eternity which preceeded his birth, a 
chain of causes was generated, which, operating under the 
name of motives, make it impossible that any thought of his 
life, should be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of Ne- 
cessity false, the human mind would no longer be a legitimate 
object of science ; from like causes it would be in vain that 
we should expect like effects: the strongest motive would no 
longer be paramount over the conduct ; all knowledge would 
be vague and undeterminate : we could not predict with any 
certainty that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow, him 
with whom we have parted in friendship to-night ; the most 



NOTES. 83 



probable inducements and the clearest reasonings would lose 
the invariable influence they possess. The contrary of this is 
demonstrably the fact. Similar circumstances produce the 
same unvariable effects. ' The precise character and motives of 
any man on any occasion being given, the moral philosopher 
could predict his actions with as much certainty as the natural ' 
philosopher could predict the effects of the mixture of any par- 
ticular chemical substances. Why is the aged husbandman 
more experienced than the young beginner 1 Because there is 
a uniform, undeniable necessity in the operation of the materi- 
al universe. Why is the old statesman more skilful than the 
raw politician 1 Because, relying on the necessary conjunction 
of motive and action, he proceeds to produce moral effects by 
the application of those moral causes which experience has 
shown to be effectual. Some actions may be found to which 
we can attach no motives, but these are the effects of causes 
with which we are unacquainted. Hence the relation which 
motive bears to voluntary action is that of cause to effect : nor, 
placed in this point of view, is it, or ever has it been the subject 
of popular or philosophical dispute. None but the few fanatics 
who are engaged in the Herculean task of reconciling the jus- 
tice of the God with the misery of man, will longer outrage 
common sense by the supposition of an event without a cause, 
voluntary action without a motive. History, politics, morals, 
criticism, all grounds of reasoning, all principles of science, 
alike assume the truth of the doctrine of Necessity. No farm- 
er carrying his corn to market doubts the sale of it at the 
market price. The master of a manufactory no more doubts 
that he can purchase the human labor necessary for his pur- 
poses, than that his machinery will act as they have been ac- 
customed to act. 

But, whilst none have scrupled to admit necessity as influ- 
encing matter, many have disputed its dominion over mind. 
Independently of its militating with the received ideas of the 
justice or God, it is by no means obvious to a superficial en- 
quiry. When the mind observes its own operations, it feels 
no connection of motive and action : but as we know " nothing 
more of causation than the constant conjunction of objects, a,nd 
the consequent inference of one from the other, as we find that 
these two circumstances are universally allowed to have place 
in voluntary action, we may be easily led to own that they are 
subjected to the necessity common to all causes." The actions 



84 NOTES. 



of the will have a regular conjunction with circumstances and 
characters ; motive is, to voluntary action, what cause is to 
effect. But the only idea we can form of causation is a con- 
stant conjunction of similar objects, and the consequent infer- 
ence of one from the other : wherever this is the case, necessity- 
is clearly established. 

The idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the will, has 
sprung from a misconception of the meaning of the word pow- 
er. What is power 1 — id quod potest ^"^ that which can produce 
any given effect. To deny power, is to say that nothing can 
or has the power to be or act. In the only true sense of the 
word power, it applies with equal force to the loadstone as to 
human will. Do you think these motives, which I shall pre- 
sent, are powerful enough to rouse him 1 is a question just as 
common as, do you think this lever has the j^ower to raise this 
weight 1 The advocates of free will assert that the will has 
the power of refusing to be determined by the strongest mo- 
tive : but the strongest motive is that which, overcoming all 
others, ultimately prevails: this assertion therefore amounts to 
a denial of the will being ultimately determined by that mo- 
tive which does determine it, which is a.bsurd. But it is equal- 
ly certain that a man can not resist the strongest motive, as 
that he cannot overcome a physical impossibility. 

The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change 
into the established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy 
religion. Reward and punishment must be considered, by the 
xSecessarian, merely as motives which he would employ in 
order to procure the adoption or abandonment of any given 
line of conduct. Desert, in the present sense of the word, 
would no longer have any meaning ; and he who should inflict 
pain upon another for no better reason than that he deserved 
it, would only gratify his revenge under pretence of satisfying 
justice. It is not enough, says the advocate of free will, that 
a criminal should be prevented from a repetition of his crime : 
he shoul I feel pain : and his torments, when justly inflicted, 
ought precisely to be proportioned to his fault But utility is 
morality ; that which is incapable of producing happiness is 
useless ; and though the crime of Damiens must be condemned, 
yet the frightful torments which revenge, under the name of 
Justice, inflicted on this unhappy man, cannot be supposed to 



* That which can do anything. 



NOTES. 85 



have augmented, even at the long run, the stock of pleasurable 
sensation in the world. At the same time, the doctrine of Ne- 
cessity does not in the least diminish our disapprobation of 
vice. The conviction which all feel, that a viper is a poisonous 
animal, and that a tiger is constrained, by the inevitable con- 
dition of its existence, to devour men, does not induce us to 
avoid them less sedulously, or even more to hesitate in destroy- 
ing them : but he would surely be of a hard heart, who, meet- 
ing with a serpent on a desert island, or in a situation where it 
was incapable of injury, should wantonly deprive it of exist- 
ence. A Necessarian is inconsequent to his own principles, if 
he indulges in hatred or contempt ; the compassion which he 
feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of injuring him : 
he looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon the 
links of the universal chain as they pass before his eyes ; whilst 
cowardice, curiosity and inconstancy only assail him in propor- 
tion to the feebleness and indistinctness with which he has per- 
ceived and rejected the delusions of free will. 

Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand 
to the principle of the universe. But if the principle of the 
universe be not an organic being, the model and prototype of 
man, the relation between it and human beings is absolutely 
none. Without some insight into its will, respecting our ac- 
tions, religion is nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode 
of animal mind ; moral qualities also are such as only a human 
being can possess ; to attribute them to the principle of the 
universe, is to annex to it properties incompatible with any 
possible definition of its nature. It is probable that the word 
God was originally only an expression denoting the unknown 
cause of the known events which men perceived in the universe. 
By the vulgar mistake of a metaphor for a real being, of a 
word for a thing, it became a man, endowed with human quali- 
ties, and governing the universe as an earthly monarch gov- 
erns his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being, 
indeed, are much in the same style as those of subjects to a 
king. They acknowledge his benevolence, deprecate his anger, 
and supplicate his favor. 

But the doctrine of Necessity teaches us that in no case could 
any event happen otherwise than it did happen, and that, if 
God is the author of good, he is also the author of evil ; that, 
if he is entitled to our gratitude for the one, he is entitled to 
our hatred for the other ; that, admitting the existence of this 



NOTES. 



hypothetic being, he is also subjected to the dominion of an im- 
mutable necessity. It is plain that the same arguments which 
prove that God is the author of food, light, and life, prove him 
also to be the author of poison, darkness, and death. The 
wide-wasting earthquake, the storm, the battle, and the tyr- 
anny, are attributable to this hypothetic being in the same 
degree as the fairest forms of nature, sunshine, liberty, and 
peace. 

But we are taught, by the doctrine of Necessity, that there 
is neither good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the 
events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our 
own peculiar mode cf being. Still less than the hypothesis of 
a God, will the doctrine of iS[ecessity accord with the belief of 
a future state of punishment — God made man such as he is, 
and then damned bim for being so : for to say that God was 
the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is to say 
that one man made a straight line and a crooked one, and an- 
other man made the incongruity. 

A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, is re- 
corded, wherein Adam and Moses are introduced disputing 
before God in the following manner. Thou, says Moses, art 
Adam, whom God created, and animated with the breath of 
life, and caused to be worshipped by the angels and placed in 
Paradise, from whence mankind have been expelled for thy 
fault. Whereto Adam answered, Thou art Moses, whom God 
chose for his apostle, and entrusted with his word, by giving 
thee the tables of the law, and whom he vouchsafed to admit 
to discourse with himself. How many j^ears dost thou find 
the law was written before I was created 1 Says Moses, forty. 
And dost thou not find, replied Adam, these words therein : 
And Adam rebelled against his Lord and transgressed 1 Which 
Moses confessing — Dost thou therefore blame jne, continued 
he, for doing that which God wrote of me, that 1 should do, 
forty years before I was created; nay, for what was decreed 
concerning me fifty thousand years before the creation of 
heaven and earth 1 

Salens Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, p. 164. 



NOTES. 87 



VIL Page 47. 

There is no God ! 

This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative 
Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit, coeternal with 
the universe, remains unshaken. 

A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to 
support any proposition, is the only secure way of attaining 
truth, on the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant : 
our knowledge of the existence of a Deity is a subject of such 
importance, that it cannot be minutely investigated ; in con- 
sequence of this conviction, we proceed briefly and impartially 
to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is neces- 
sary first to consider the nature of belief. 

When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the 
agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is com- 
posed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. 
Many obstacles frequent!}'' prevent this perception from being 
immediate ; these the mind attempts to remove, in order that 
the perception may be distinct. The mind is active in the in- 
vestigation, in order to perfect the state of perception of the 
relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to 
each, which is passive : the investigation being confused with 
the perception, has induced many falsely to imagine that the 
mind is active in belief — that belief is an act of volition — in 
consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pur- 
suing, continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of 
criminality to disbelief, of which, in its nature, it is incapable ; 
it is equally incapable of merit. 

Belief, then, is a passion — the strength of which, like every 
other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excite- 
ment. 

The degrees of excitement are three : 

The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind ; 
consequently their esi-dence claims the strongest assent. 

The decision of the mind, founded on our own experience 
derived from these sources, claims the next degree. 

The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former 
one, occupies the lowest degree. 

^ (A graduated scale on which should be marked the capabili- 
ties of propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would 



88 NOTES. 



be a just barometer of the belief that ought to be attached to 
them ) 

Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary 
to reason ; reason is founded on the evidence of our senses. 

Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions : 
it is to be considered what arguments we receive from each of 
them, which should convince us of the existence of a Deity. 

1st. The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear 
to us, if he should convince our sen.ses of his existence, this 
revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom 
the Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible con- 
viction of his existence. But the God of theologians is incapa- 
ble of local visibility. 

2d. Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is, 
must either have had a beginning, or have existed from all eter- 
nity ; he also knows, that whatever is not eternal must have 
had a cause. When this reasoning is applied to the universe, 
it is necessary to prove that it was created : until that is clear- 
ly demonstrated, we may reasonably suppose that it has en- 
dured from all eternity. "We must prove design before we can 
infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of causa- 
tion is derivable from the constant conjunction of objects, and 
the consequent inference of one from the other. In a case 
where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind 
believes that which is least incomprehensible ; — it is easier to 
suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity, than to 
conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it ; if the 
mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to 
increase the intolerability of the burthen 1 

The other argument, which is founded on a man's know- 
ledge of his own existence, stands thus. A man knows not 
only that he now is, but that once he was not : consequently 
there must have been a cause. But our idea of causation is 
alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects and 
the consequent inference of one from the other ; and, reasoning 
experimentally, we can only infer from effects, causes exactly 
adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a generative 
power which is effected by certain instruments; we cannot 
prove that it is inherent in these instruments ; nor is the con- 
trary hypothesis capable of demonstration ; we admit that the 
generative power is incomprehensible ; but to suppose that the 
same effect is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent 



NOTES. 89 



being, leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it 
more incomprehensible. 

3d. Testimony. It is required that testimony should not be 
contrary to reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces 
the senses of men of his existence, can only be admitted by us, 
if our mind considers it less probable ^hat these men should 
have been deceived, than that the Deity should have appeared 
to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, 
who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles, 
but that the Deity was irrational ; for he commanded that he 
should be believed, he proposed the highest rewards for faith, 
eternal punishments for disbelief. We can only command vol- 
untary^ actions ; belief is not an act of volition ; the mind is 
even passive, or involuntarily active ; from this it is evident 
that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testimony 
is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been before 
shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone 
then, who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses, 
can believe it. 

Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the 
three sources of conviction, the mind cannot believe the exist- 
ence of a creative God ; it is also evident, that, as belief is a 
passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to 
disbelief; and that rhey only are reprehensible who neglect to 
remove the false medium through which their mind views any 
subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknow- 
ledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Diety . 

God is an hypothesis, and as such, stands in need of proof : 
the onus prohandi^' rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Ixewton 
sa-ys : Hypytheisis non Jingo, quicqmd enim ex phoenomensis 
non deducitur, hyjjothesis vocanda est, et hypothesis vel meta- 
j)hysic(E, vel physicce, vel qualitatum occultarum, seu mechan- 
icce, in philosophia locum non habent.-f To all proofs of the ex- 
istence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. — We see a 
variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers : we merely 
know their effects ; we are in a state of ignorance with respect 
to their essences and causes. These Newton calls the phenom- 

* The burthen of proof. 

1 1 do not invent hypothesis; for Ivhatever is not deduced from 
phenomena is to be called an hypothesis ; and hypothesis, either 
metaphysical or physical, or grounded on occult qualities, should 
not be allowed any room in philosophy. 



90 NOTES. 



mena of things ; but the pride of philosophy is unwilling to ad- 
mit its ignorance of their causes. From the phenomena which 
are the objects of our senses, we attempt to infer a cause, 
which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all negative 
and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent 
this general name to conceal our ignorance of causes and es- 
sences. — The being called God by no means answers with the 
conditions prescribed by Newton ; it bears every mark of a veil 
woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philo- 
sophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its 
texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words 
have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the oc- 
cult qualities of the peripatetics to the effluvium of Bojde, and 
the crinities or nebulas of Herschel. God is represented as in- 
finite, eternal, incomprehensible ; he is contained under every 
pi'cedicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate. 
Even his worshippers allow that it is impossible to form any 
idea ol him ; they exclaim with the French poet, 

Pour dire cc quHl est, ilfaut etre lui-meme.* 

Lord Bacon says, that "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to 
philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation : all which 
may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion 
were not ; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth 
an absolute monarchy- in the minds of men; therefore Atheism 
did never perturb states : for it makes men wavy of themselves, 
as looking no farther, and we see the times inclined to Atheism 
(as the time of Augustus Cajsar) were civil times ; but super- 
stition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth 
in a new primum mobile^ that ravisheth all the spheres of gov- 
ernment. Bacon's Moral Essay on Superstition. 

The primary theology of man made hira first fear and worship 
even the elements, gross and material objects ; he then paid his 
adorations to the presiding agents of the elements, to inferior 
genii, to heroes, or to men endowed with great qualities. By 
continuing to reflect he thought to simplify things, by submit- 
ting all nature to a single agent, to a spirit, to a universal soul, 
which put this nature and its parts into motion. In ascend- 
ing from cause to cause, mankind have ended, by seeing no- 
thing, and it is in the midst of this obscurity, that they have 

* To tell what he is, you must be himself. 



NOTES. 91 



placed their God : it is in this dark abj^ss, that their restless 
imagination is always laboring to form chimeras which will 
afflict them, until a know^ledge of nature shall dissipate the 
phantoms which they have always so vainly adored. 

If we wish to render an account to ourselves of our ideas re- 
specting the Deity, we shall be obliged to confess that by the 
word, God, men have never been able to designate any thing 
else but the most hidden, the most remote, the most unknown 
cause of the effects which they perceive : they only make use 
of this word, when the springs of natural and known causes 
cease to be visible to them : the instant they lose the thread, 
or their understanding can no longer follow the chain of these 
causes, they cut the knot of their difacuUy and terminate their 
researches by calling God the last of these causes, that is to 
say, that which is beyond all causes with which they are ac- 
quainted. Thus they merely assign a vague denomination to 
an unknown cause, at which their indolence or the limits of 
their information compels them to stop. Whenever we are 
told that God is the author of any phenomenon, that signifies 
that we are ignorant how such a phenomenon can be produced, 
with the assistance only of the natural powers or causes with 
wbich we are acquainted. It is thus that the generality of 
mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attribute to the Deity, not 
only the uncom^mon effects which strike them, but even the 
most simple events, whose causes are the most easily discover- 
able, to all who have had the opportunity of reflecting on 
them. In a word, man has always respected the unknown 
causes of those surprising effects, which his ignorance prevent- 
ed him from unravelling. It was upon the ruins of nature 
that men first raised the imaginary colossus of a Deity. 

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, a knowledge 
of nature is calculated to destroj^ them. 

In proportion as man becomes informed, his powers and re- 
sources increase with his knowledge, the sciences, the conser- 
vative arts, and industry furnish him with assistance, experi- 
ence inspires him with confidence, or procures him the means 
of resisting the efforts of many causes, which cease to alarm 
him, as soon as he becomes acquainted with them. In a word, 
his terrors are dissipated in the same proportion as his mind is 
enlightened, A well informed man ceases to be superstitious. 

It is never but on trust, that whole nations worship the God of 
their fathers and their priests ; authority, confidence, submission 



92 NOTES. 



and custom, to them supply the place of proofs and conviction; 
they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers have 
taught them to prostrate themselves and pray, but wherefore 
did the latter kneel ^ Because in remote periods, Xheir guides 
and regulators taught them it was a duty. ''Worship and 
oelieve," said they, "gods which you cannot comprehend, rely 
on our profound wisdom, we know more than you concerning 
the Deity." " But why shoull I rely on youl" '" Because it 
is the will of God, because he will punish you if you dare to 
resist." " But is not this God the thing in question 1" Thus 
men have always been satisfied with this vicious circle, the in- 
dolence of their minds led tliem to believe the shorter mode 
was to rely upon the opinions of others. All religious notions 
are founded upon authority alone, all the religions of the world 
forbid investigation, and will not permit reasoning: it is au- 
thority which requires as to believe in God, this God himself 
is only founded upon the authority of some men who pretend 
to know him, and to be sent by him to announce him to the 
world. A God made by men has doubtless need of men to 
make him known to men. 

Is it then only for the x^riests of the inspired, for metaphysi- 
cians, that a conviction of the existence of a God is reserved, 
and which is nevertheless said to be necessary to all mankind. 
But do we find a harmony of theological opinion among the in- 
spired, or the reflective, in the different parts of the world *? 
Are those even who profess to worship the same God agreed 
respecting him 1 Are they satisfied with the proofs of his ex- 
istence which their colleagues bring forward 1 Do they unan- 
imously subscribe to the ideas which they adduce respecting 
his nature, his conduct, and the mode of understanding his pre- 
tended oracles 1 Is there a country throughout the earth in 
which the knowledge is really perfected 1 Has it assumed in 
any quarter the consistency, and uniformity, which we per- 
ceive human knowledge to have assumed in the most trifling 
arts, in trades the most despised '? The words spirit, immaten- 
ality, creatioay jncdestination, ^racc, this crowd of subtile dis- 
tinctions with which theology, in some countries, is universally 
filled — these ingenious inventions, imagined by the successive 
reasoners of ages, have, alas ! only embroiled the question, 
and never has the science, the most important to mankind, 
been able to acquire the least stability. — For thousands of 
years have these idle dreamers transmitted to each other the 



NOTES. 93 



task of meditating on the Deity, of discovering his secret paths, 
of inventing hypotheses calculated to solve this important enig- 
ma. The little success they have met with has not discouraged 
theological vanity. God has always been talked of, mankind 
have cut each other's throats for him, and this great being still 
continues to be the most unknown, and the most sought after. 

Fortunate would it have been for mankind if, confining them- 
selves to the visible objects in which they are interested, they 
had employed in perfecting true science, laws, morals, and 
education, half the exertions they have made in their re- 
searches after a Deity. They would have been still wiser and 
more fortunate, could they have resolved to leave their blind 
guides to quarrel among themselves, and to sound the depths 
calculated only to turn their brains without meddling with 
their senseless disputes. But it is the very essence of ignorance 
to attach importance to what it does not understand. Human 
vanity is such that the mind becomes irritated by difficult}''. 
In proportion as an object fades from our sight do we exert 
ourselves to seize it, because it then stimulates our pride, it 
excites our curiosity, and becomes interesting. In contending 
for his God, every one, in fact, is only contending for his own 
vanity, which, of all the passions produced by the mal-organi- 
zation of society, is the most prompt to take alarm, and the 
most calculated to give birth to great absurdities. 

If laying aside for a moment the gloomy ideas which theol- 
ogy gives us of a capricious God, whose partial a,nd despotic 
decrees decide the fate of men, we fix our eyes upon the pre- 
tended goodness which all men, even whilst trembling before 
this God, agree in giving to him, if we suppose him to be actu- 
ated by the project which is attributed to him, of having only 
labored for his own glory, of exacting the adoration of intelli- 
gent beings, of seeking only in his works the welfare of the 
human race ; how can we reconcile his views and dispositions 
with the truly invincible ignorance in which this God, so good 
and glorious, leaves the greater part of mankind respecting 
himself? If God wishes to be known, beloved, and praised, 
why does he not reveal himself under some favorable features 
to all intelligent beings by whom he wishes to be loved and 
worshipped 1 Why does he not manifest to all the earth in an 
unequivocal manner, much more calculated to convince us, 
than by these particular revelations which seem to accuse the 
Deity of an vmjust partially for some of his creatures '? Would 



94 NOTES. 



not the Omnipotent possess more convincing means of reveal- 
ing himself to mankind than these ridiculous metamorphoses, 
these pretended incarnations, which are attested to us by writ- 
ers who so little agree among themselves in the recitals they 
give of them 1 Instead of so many miracles invented to prove 
the divine mission, of so many legislators revered by the differ- 
ent nations of the world, could not the supreme being convince 
in an instant the human mind of the things which he chose to 
make known to it '? Instead of suspending the sun in the 
vault of the firmament, instead of dispersing the stars and the 
constellations, which occupy space without order, would it not 
have been more conformable to the views of a God so jealous 
of his glory, and so well disposed to man, to write in a mode 
not liable to be disputed, his name, his attributes, and his un- 
changeable will in everlasting characters, equally legible to all 
the inhabitants of the earth '? No one could have doubted the 
existence of a God, his manifest will, his invisible intentions. 
Under the eye of this terrible Deity no one would have had 
the audacity to violate his ordinances, no mortal would have 
dared to place himself in the situation of drawing down his 
wrath ; and lastly, no man would have had the effrontery to 
impose on his fellow creatures, in the name of the Deity, or to 
interpret his will according to his own fancy . 

In fact, even should the existence of the theological God be 
admitted, and the reality of the discordant attributes which 
are given to him, nothing could be inferred from it, to authorise 
the conduct or the modes of worship, which we are told to ob- 
serve towards him. Theology is truly the tub of the Danaides. 
By dint of contradictory qualities and rash assertions, it has 
so trammelled, as it were, its God, that it has made it impos- 
sible for him to act. If he is infinitely good, what reason 
have we to fear him 1 If he is infinitel}^ wise, why should we 
be uneasy for our future state 1 If he knows all, why inform 
him of our wants, and tease him with our prayers 1 If he is 
omnipresent, why raise temples to him 1 If he is master of all, 
why sacrifice and make offerings to him 1 If he is just, how 
can we believe that ho punishes creatu; es whom he has afflicted 
with weakness 1 If grace does all in them, for what reason 
should he reward them 1 If he is omnipotent, how can we 
offend, how resist him \ If he is reasonable, how could he be 
incensed against his blind creatures to whom he has only left 
the liberty of falling into error 1 If he is immutable, by what 



NOTES. 95 



right do we pretend to make him change his decrees ] If he 
is incomprehensible, why do we busy ourselves in endeavouring 
to understand him I— IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS 
NOT THE UNIVERSE CONVINCED! If the knowledge 
of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the clearest and 
most evident 1 — System of Nature, Lcmdon, 1781 

The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly pro- 
fesses himself an atheist : — 

For which reason, I consider that the enquiry after the form 
and figure of the Deity, must be attributed to human weak- 
ness. Whatever God ma}^ be (if indeed there be one) and 
wherever he may exist, he must be all sense, all sight, all 
hearing, all life, all mind, self-existent. :^ * * 

But it is a great consolation to man, with all his infirmities, to 
reflect that God himself cannot do all things : for he cannot 
inflict on himself death, even if he should wish to die, that best 
of gifts to man amidst the cares and suiferings of life ; neither 
can he make men eternal, nor raise the dead, nor prevent those 
who have lived, from liviDg, nor those v/ho have borne honors 
from wearing them ; he has no power over the past, except 
that of oblivion, and (to relax our graviiy awhile, and indulge 
in a joke.) he cannot prevent twice ten from being twenty, and 
many other things of a similar nature From these observa- 
tions it is clearly apparent that the powers of nature are what 
we call God — Plin Nat Hist. 

The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See 
Sir W. Dru7nmond's Academical QtiestijMs, chapter iii. — Sir 
W. seems to consider the atheism to which it leads, as a sufii- 
cient presumption of the falsehood of the system of gravita- 
tion ; but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of 
philosophy to admit a deduction from facts, than a hypothesis 
incapable of proof, although it might militate with the obsti- 
nate preconceptions .of the mob Had this author instead of 
inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demon- 
strated its falsehood, his conduct would have been more su'ted 
to the modesty of the sceptic, and the toleration of. the phi- 
losopher. 

All things are made by the power of God, yet, doubtless, 
because the power of nature is the power of God : besides we 
are unable to understand the power of God, so far as we are 
ignorant of natural causes : therefore we foolishly recur to the 



96 Notfis. 



power of God whenever we are unacquainted with the natural 
cause of anj- thing, or in other words, with the power of God. 
Spmoza^ Tract. Theologico, Pol., chap. 1. p. 14. 

VII. Page 48. 
Ahasuerus, rise ! 

Ahasuerus, the Jew, crept forth from the dark cave of 
Mount Carmel. Near two thousand years have elapsed since 
he was first goaded by never-ending restlessness, to rove the 
globe from pole to pole. When our Lord was wearied with the 
bra'then of his ponderous cross, and wanted to rest before the 
door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove him away with 
brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under 
the heavj^ load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death 
appeared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, '* Bar- 
barian ! thou hast denied rest to the Son of Man ; be it de- 
nied thee also, until he comes to judge the world." 

A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads 
him now from country to country ; he is denied the consolation 
which death affords, and precluded from the rest of the peace- 
ful grave. 

Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel 
— he shook the dust from his beard — and taking up one of the 
sculls heaped there, hurled it down the eminence : it rebounded 
from the earth in shivered atoms. This was my father ! 
roared Ahasuerus. Seven more sculls rolled down from rock 
to rock ; while the infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly 
looks, exclaimed— And these were my wives ! He still contin- 
ued to hurl down scull after scull, roaring in dreadful accents 
— And these, and these, and these were my children ! They 
could die ; but, I ! reprobate wretch, alas ! I cannot die ! 
Dreadful beyond conception is the judgment that hangs over 
me. Jerusalem fell — I crushed the sucking babe, and precipi- 
tated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the Ro- 
mans — but, alas ! alas ! the restless curse held me by the hair, 
and I could not die ! 

Rome the giantess fell — I placed myself before the falling 
statue — she fell and did not crush me. Nations sprung up and 
disappeared before me ; but I remained and did not die. From 
cloud-encircled cliffs did I precipitate myself into the ocean ; 



NOTES. 97 



but the foaming billows cast me upon the shore, and the burn- 
ing arrow of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped 
into Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants for ten 
long months, polluting with my groans the Mount's sulphure- 
ous mouth — ah ! ten long months. The volcano fermented, and 
in a fiery stream of lava cast mo up. I lay torn by the tor- 
ture-snakes of hell amid the glowing cinders, and yet continued 
to exist. A forest was on fire : I darted on wings of fury and 
despair into the crakling wood. Fire dropped upon me from 
the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs ; alas ! it could 
not consume them. I now mixed with the butchers of man- 
kind, and plunged in the tempe,-t of the raging battle. I 
roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious 
German ; but arrows and spears rebounded in shiv^ers from my 
body. The Saracen's flaming sword broke upon my scull ; 
balls in vain hissed upon me : the lightnings of battle glared 
harmless around my loins : in vain did the elephant trample 
on me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed ! The 
mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled 
me high in the air — I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was 
only singed. The giant's steel club rebounded from my bodj^ ; 
the executioner's hand could not strangle me ; the tiger's 
tooth could not pierce me, nor would the hungry lion in the 
circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes, and 
pinched the red crest of the dragon. The serpent stung, but 
could not destroy me : the dragon tormented, but dared not 
to devour me. I now provoked the fury of tyrants ; I said to 
Nero, Thou art a blood-hound ! I said to Christiern, Thou art 
a blood-hound ! I said to Muley Ismail, Thou art a blood- 
hound ! The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did not kill 

me. Ha ! not to be able to die — not to be able to die — not 

to be permitted to rest after the toils of life — to be doomed to 
be imprisoned for ever in the clay -formed dungeon — to be for- 
ever clogged with this worthless body, its load of diseases and 
infirmities — to be condemned to hold for milleniums that yawn- 
ing monster Sameness and Time, that hungry hyena, ever 

bearing children, and ever devouring again her off'spring ! 

Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful avenger in heaven, 
hast thou in thine armory of wrath a punishment more dread- 
ful 1 then let it thunder upon me ; command a hurricane to 
sweep me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there may lie ex- 
tended : may pant, and writhe, and die ! 



98 NOTES. 



This fragment is the translation of part of some German 
work, whose title I have vainly endeavoured to discover. I 
picked it up, dirty and torn, some years ago, in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields. 

VII. Page 51. 

I will beget a Son, and he shall bear 
The sins of all the world. 

A book is put into our hands when children, called the Bible, 
the purport of whose history is briefly this : That God made 
the Earth in six days, and there planted a delightful garden, 
in which he placed the first pair of human beings. In the 
midst of the garden he planted a tree, whose fruit, although 
within their reach, they were forbidden to touch. That the 
Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of this 
fruit ; in consequence of which God condemned both them and 
their posterity yet unborn to satisfy his justice by their eter- 
nal misery. That four thousand years after these events, (the 
human race in the meanwhile having gone unredeemed to per- 
dition,) God engendered with the betrothed wife of a carpenter 
in Judea, (whose virginity was nevertheless uninjured,) and 
begat a son whose name was Jesus Christ: and who was cruci- 
fied and died, in order that no more men might be devoted to 
hell-fire, he bearing the burden of his Father's displeasure by 
proxy. The book states, in addition, that the soul of who- 
ever disbelieves his sacrifice will be burned with everlasting 
fire. 

During many ages of misery and darkness this story gained 
implicit belief ; but at length men arose who suspected that it 
was a fable and imposture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from 
being a God, was only a man like themselves. But a numer- 
ous set of men, who derived and still derive immense emolu- 
ments from this opinion, in the shape of a popular belief, told 
the vulgar, that if they did not believe in the Bible, thej^ would 
be danioed to all eternity ; and burned, imprisoned, and 
poisoned all the unbiassed and unconnected enquires who oc- 
casionally arose. They still oppress them, so far as the people, 
now become more enlightened, will allow. 

The belief in all that the Bible contains is called Christianity. 
A Roman Governor of Judea, at the instances of a priest-led 



NOTES. 99 



mob, crucified a man called Jesus, eighteen centuries ago. 
He was a man of pure life, who desired to rescue his country- 
men from the tyranny of their barbarous and degrading super- 
stitions. The common fate of all who desire to benefit man- 
kind awaited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the 
priests, demanded his death, although his very judge made 
public acknowledgment of his innocence. Jesus was sacrificed 
to the honor of that God with whom he was afterwards con- 
founded. It is of importance, therefore, to distinguish between 
the pretended character of this being, as the Son of God and 
the Saviour of the world, and his real character as a man, who, 
for a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit of his 
life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so long deso- 
lated the universe in his name. Whilst the one, is a hypocriti- 
cal demon who announces himself as the God of compassion 
and peace, even whilst he stretches forth his blood-red hand 
with the sword of discord to waste the earth, having confessed- 
ly devised this scheme of desolation from eternity ; the other 
stands in the foremost list of those true heroes, who have died 
in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and have braved torture, 
contempt and poverty, in the cause of suiferiog humanity.* 

The vulgar ever in extremes, became persuaded that the 
crucifixion of Jesus was a supernatural event. Testimonies of 
miracles, so frequent in unenlightened ages, were not wanting 
to prove that he was something divine. This belief, rolling 
through the lapse of age£, met with the reveries of Plato and 
the reasonings of Aristotle, and acquired force and extent, un- 
till the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute 
was death, which to doubt was infamy. 

Christianity is now the established religion ; he who at- 
tempts to impugn it, must be contented to behold murderers 
and traitors take precedence of him in public opinion ; though, 
if his genius be equal to his courage, and assisted by a peculiar 
coalition of circumstances, future ages may exalt him to a di- 
vinity, and persecute others in his name, as he was persecuted 
in the name of his predecessor in the homage of the world. 

The same means that have supported every other popular 
belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, as- 
sassination, and falsehood ; deeds of unexampled and incom- 

* Since writing (his note, I have seen reason to suspect that Je- 
sus was an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of Judea. 



100 NOTES. 



parable atrocity have made it what it is. The blood shed by 
the votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the establish- 
ment of his religion, would probably suffice to drown all other 
sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our an- 
cestors a faith thus fostered and supported; we quarrel, per- 
secute, and hate for its maintenance. Even under a govern- 
ment which, whilst it infringes the very right of thought and 
speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of the press, a man is 
pilloried and imprisoned because he is a Deist, and no one 
raises his voice in the indignation of outraged hi\manity. But 
it is ever a proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by 
those who use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admis- 
sion ; and a dispassionate observer would feel himself more 
powerfully interested in favor of a man, who, depending on the 
truth of his opinions, simply stated his reasons for entertain- 
ing them, than in that of his aggressor, who, daringly avowing 
his unwillingness or incapacity to answer them by argument, 
proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of their 
promulgator, bj^ that torture and imprisonment whose inflic- 
tion he could command. 

Analogy seems to ffivor the opinion, that as, like other sys- 
tems, Christianity has arisen and augmented, so like them it 
will decay and perish; that, as violence, darkness, and deceit, 
not rea.soning and persuasion* have procured its admission 
among mankind, so, when enthusiasm has subsided, and time, 
that infallible controverter of false opinions has involved its 
pretended evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will be- 
come obsolete : that Milton's poem alone will give permanency 
to the remembrance of its absurdities ; and that men will 
laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, and original sin, 
as they now do at the metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles 
of Romish saints, the efficacy of witchcraft, and the appear- 
ance of departed spirits. 

Had the Christian religion commenced and continued by the 
mere force of reasoning and persuasion, the preceeding analogy 
would be inadmissible. We should never speculate on the fu- 
ture obsoleteness of a system perfectly conformable to nature 
and reason ; it would endure so long as they endured ; it would 
be a truth as indi.sputable as the light of the sun, the crimin 
ality of murder, and other facts, whose evidence, depending on 
our organization and relative situations, must remain acknoW' 
ledged as satisfactory, so long as man is man. It is an iucon- 



i 



NOTES. 101 



trovertible fact, the consideration of which ought to repress 
the hasty conclusions of credulity, or moderate its obstinacy 
in maintaining them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical 
race of men, had even the resolution of Pontius Pilate been 
equal to his candor, the Christian religion never could have 
prevailed, it could not even have existed ; on so feeble a thread 
hangs the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the human race ! 
When will the vulgar learn humility 1 When will the pride 
of ignorance blush at having believed before it could compre- 
hend! 

Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false ; if true, 
it comes from God, and its authenticity can admit of doubt and 
dispute no further than its omnipotent author is willing to al- 
low. Either the power or the goodness of God is called in 
question, if he leaves those doctrines most essential to the well- 
being of man in doubt and dispute ; the only ones which, since 
their promulgation have been the subject of unceasing cavil, 
the cause of irreconcileable hatred. If God has spoken-, why is 
ike Universe not convinced ? 

There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures ; " Those 
who obey not God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall 
be punished with everlasting destruction." This is the pivot 
upon which all religions turn : they all assume that it is in our 
power to believe or not to believe ; whereas the mind can only 
believe that which it thinks true. A human being can only be 
supposed accountable for those actions which are influenced by 
his will. But belief is utterly distinct from, and unconnected 
with volition : it is the apprehension of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of the ideas that compose any proposition. Belief 
is a passion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like 
other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the 
degrees of excitement, v olition is essential to merit or de- 
merit. But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible 
degrees of merit and demerit to that which is worthy of neither, 
and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar faculty of 
the mind, whose presence is essential to their being. 

Christianity was intended to reform the world : had an all- 
wise being planned it, nothing is more improbable than that it 
should have failed : omniscience would infallibly have foreseen 
the inutility of such a scheme which experience demonstrates, 
to this age, to have been utterly unsuccessful. 

Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the 



102 NOTES. 



Deity. Prayer may be considered under two points of view: 
as an endeavor to change the intentions of God, or as a formal 
testimony of our obedience. But the former case supposes 
that the caprices of a limited intelligence can occasionally in- 
struct the creator of the world how to regulate the universe ; 
and the latter a certain degree of servility analogous to the loy- 
alty demanded by earthl}^ tyrants Obedience, indeed, is only 
the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can 
do somothiag better than reason. 

Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon miracles, 
prophecies, and martyrdoms No religion ever existed which 
had not i(.s prophets, its attested miracles, and, -above all, 
crowds of devotees, who would bear patiently the most horrible 
tortures to prove its authenticit}^, it should appear that in no 
case can a discriminating mind subscribe to the genuineness of 
a miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature's law, by a 
supernatural cause : by a cause acting beyond that eternal 
circle within which ail things are included God breaks through 
the law of nature that he may convince mankind of the truth 
of that revelation which, in spite of his precautions, has been, 
since its introduction, the subject of unceasing schism and cavil. 
Miracles resolve themselves into the following question:* 
Whether it is more probable the laws of nature, hitherto so 
immutably harmonious, should have undergone violation, or 
that a man should have told a lie '? Whether it is more prob- 
able that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event, or 
that we know the supernatural one 1 That, in old times, when 
the powers of nature were less known than at present, a certain 
set of men were themselves deceived, or had some hidden mo- 
tive for deceiving others ; or that God begat a son, who, in his 
legislation, measuring merit by belief, evidenced himself to be 
totally ignorant of the powers of the human mind — of what is 
involuntary, and what is the contrary' ? 

We have many instances of men telling lies : — none of an in- 
fraction of nature's laws, those laws of whose government alone 
we have any knowledge or experience. The records of all na- 
tions afford innumerable instances of men deceiving others 
either from vanity or interest, or themselves being deceived by 
the limitedness of their views and their ignorance of natural 
causes: but where is the accredited case of God having come 
upon earth to give the lie to his own creations 1 There would 
* See Hume's Essay, vol. ii., p. 121. 



NOTES. 103 



be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost ; 
but the assertion of a child that he saw one as he passed through 
the churchyard, is universally admitted to be less miraculous. 

But even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to 
life before our eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being 
considered the son of God; — the Humane Society restores 
drowned persons, and bectxuse it makes no mystery of the 
method it employs, its members are not miitaken for the sons 
of God. All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance 
of the cause of any event is that we do not know it : had the 
Mexicans attended to this simple rule when they heard the 
cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have considered them 
as Gods : the experiments of modern chemistry would have 
deified the wisest philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome to 
have accounted for them oa natural principles. An author of 
strong common sense has observed, that " a miracle is no mira- 
cle at second hand ;" he might have added, that a miracle is no 
miracle in any case ; for until we are acquainted with ail natu- 
ral causes, we have no reason to imagine others. 

There remains to be considered another proof of Christianity 
— Prophecy. A book is written before a certain event, in 
which this event is foretold ; how could the prophet have fore- 
known it without inspiration ] How could he have been in- 
spired without God 1 The greatest stress is laid on the proph- 
ecies of Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and 
that of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The 
prophecy of Moses is a collection of every possible cursing and 
blessing ; and it is so far from being marvellous that the one 
of dispersion should have been fulfilled, that it would have 
been more surprising if, out of all these, none should have 
taken efi:ect. In Deuteronomy, chapter xx viii. , verse 64. where 
Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they 
shall there serve Gods of wood and stone : "And the Lord 
shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the 
earth to the other, and there thou shalt serve other Gods, which 
neither thou no^r thy fathers have known, even Gods of wood and 
stone.'' The Jews are at this day remarkably tenacious of 
their religion, Moses also declares that the/ shall be sub- 
jected to these causes for disobedience to his ritual; '*Andit 
shall come to pass, if thou wilt not harken unto the voice of the 
Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and 
statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses 



104 NOTES. 



shall come upon thee." Is this the real reason 1 The third, 
fourth, and fifth chapters of Hosea, are a piece of immodest 
confession. The indelicate type might apply in a hundred 
senses to a hundred things. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah 
is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the ora-cles 
of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses, Isaiah, and Ho- 
sea did write when they are said to have written, is far from 
clear and circumstantial. 

But prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle : 
we have no right to suppose that a man foreknew future events 
from God, until it is demonstrated that he neither could know 
them by his own exertions, nor that the writings which con- 
tain the prediction could possibly have been fabricated after 
the event pretended to be foretold. It is more probable that 
writings, pretending to divine inspiration, should have been 
fabricated after the fulfillment of their pretended prediction, 
than that they should have really been divinely inspired ; when 
we consider that the latter supposition makes God at once the 
creator of the human mind and ignorant of its primary powers, 
particularly as we have numberless instances of false religions, 
and forged prophecies, of things long past, and no accredited 
case of God having conversed with men directly or indirectly. 
It is also possible that the description of an event might have 
foregone its occurrence : but this is far from being a legitimate 
proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to 
the character of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, 
jDrophesied. 

Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even 
by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable prediction : *' The 
despotic government of France is screwed up to the highest 
pitch ; a revolution is fast approaching ; that revolution, I am 
convinced, will be radical and sanguinary." — This appeared in 
the letters of the i:)rophet long before the accomplishment of 
this wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars come 
to pass, or have they not 1 If they have, how could the Earl 
have foreknown them without inspiration T If we admit the 
truth of the Christian religion on testimony such as this, we 
must admit on the same strength of evidence, that God has 
affixed the highest rewards to belief, and the eternal tortures 
of the never-dying worm to disbelief ; both of which have been 
demonstrated to be involuntary. 

The last proof of the Christian religion depends on the influ- 



Notes. 105 



ence of the Holy Ghost. Theologians divide the influence of 
the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and extraordinary modes of 
operation. The latter is supposed to be that which inspired 
the prophets and apostles ; and the former to be the grace of 
God, which summarily makes known the truth of his revelation 
to those whose minds are fitted for its reception by a submis- 
sive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this manner can 
do any thing but account for their conviction, describe the time 
at which it happened, or the manner in which it came in upon 
them. It is supposed to enter the mind by other channels than 
those of the senses, and therefore professes to be superior to 
reason founded on their experience. 

Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of a divine 
revelation, unless we demolish the foundations of all human 
knowledge, it is requisite that our reason should previously 
demonstrate its genuineness: for, before we extinguish the 
steady ray of reason and common sense, it is fit that we should 
discover whether we cannot do without their assistance, wheth- 
er or no there be any other which may suffice to guide us 
through the labyrinth of life:* for, if a man is to be inspired 
upon all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing because he is 
sure, if the ordinary operations of the spirit are not to be con- 
sidered very extraordinary modes of demonstration, if enthusi- 
asm is to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of sanity, 
all reasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting 
for his prophet, the Indian immolates himself at the chariot 
wheels of Brahma, the Hottentot worships an insect, the Ne- 
gro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican sacrifices human victims. 
Their degree of conviction must certainly be very strong ; it 
cannot arise from conviction, it must from feelings, the reward 
of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition 
to the strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried 
internal evidence, I fear their inspired brethren, the orthodox 
missionaries, would be so uncharitable as to pronounce them 
obstinate. 

Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, 
because all human testimony has ever been insufficient to es- 
tablish the possibility of miracles. That which is incapable of 
proof itself, is no proof of any thing else. Prophecy has also 

♦ See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book iv. chap. 
xix., on Enthusiasm. 



106 Nof^s. 



been rejected by the test of reason. Those, then, who have 
been actually inspu-ed, are the only true believers in the Chris- 
tian religion. 

Mox numine viso 
Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater 
Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu 
Auctorem peritura suum. Mortalia corda. 
Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno 
Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem. 

Claud iarn^ Carmen Paschale.* 
Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its 
own infamy and refutation with it. 

YIII. Page 59. 

Him, (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing. 
Which, from ihe exhaustless lore of human weal 
Dawns on the virtuous mind) the thoughts that rise 
In time destroying infiniteness, gift, 
With self enshrined eternity, &c. 

Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our 
mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes 
the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it 
renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind 
be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute bj'' the 
clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of 
the spaces would actually occupy so much greater extent in 
the mind as to exceed one in quantity. If, therefore, the hu- 
man mind, by any future improvement of its sensibility, should 
become conscious of an infinite number of ideas in a minute, 
that minute would be eternity. I do not hence infer that the 
actual space between the birth and death of a man will ever be 
prolonged ; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and that the 
number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is indefi- 
nite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours ; 

♦ Upon seeing the Divinity, the Virgin's womb soon swelled, and 
the unmarried mother was amazed to find herself filled with a mys- 
terious progeny, and that she was to bring forth to the world her 
own Creator. A mortal frnnie veiled the Fr-imerof the Heavens, 
and he who embraces the wide-surrounding circle of the world, lay 
himself concealed in the recesses of the womb. 



NOTES. 107 



another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time per- 
ceived by these two persons is immense ; one hardly will be- 
lieve that half an hour has elapsed, the other could credit that 
centuries had flown during his agony. Thus the life of a man 
of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, 
with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miser- 
able priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dullness. 
The one has perpetuallj'- cultivated his mental faculties, has 
rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and gen- 
eralize amid the lethargy of every-day business ; — the other 
can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is 
unable to remember the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps 
the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. 

Dark fiood of time ! 
Roll as listeth thee—I measure not 
By months or moments thy ambiguous course, 
Another may stand by me on the brink 
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken 
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love. 
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought 
Prolong my being. If I wake no more. 
My life more actual living will contain 
Then some grey veterans of the world's cold school, 
Whose listless hours unprofitabl}'' roll. 
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. 

See GodwirCs Pol. Jus. vol. i. p. 411 ; and Condarcet, Es- 
xuisse d'un Tableau Historiqus des Pr ogres de ['.Esprit ku- 
main, Epoqueix. 

VIII. Page 60. 

No longer now 
He slays the Iamb that looks him in the face. 

I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral nature 
of man originated m his unnatural habits of life. The ori- 
gin of man, like that of the universe, of which he is a part, 
is enveloped in impenetrable mystery. His generations 
either had a beginning, or they had not. The weight of 
evidence in favor of each of these suppositions seems tole- 



108 NOTES. 



rably equal ; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present 
argument whicli is assumed. The language spoken, how- 
ever, by the mythology of nearly all religions, seems to 
prove, that at some distant period man forsook the path of 
nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of his being 
to unnatural appetites. The date of this event seems to 
have also been that of some great change in the climates of 
the earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence.— 
The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil, 
and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of God, and 
the loss cf everlasting life, admits of no other explanation 
than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatu- 
ral diet. Milton was so well aware of this, that he makes 
Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the consequence of his dis- 
obedience : 



- Immediately a place 



Before his eyes appeared: sad, noisome, dark: 
A lazar house it seemed ; wherein were laid 
Numbers of all diseased: all maladies 
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms 
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, 
Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs, 
Daemoniac phrenzy, moping rnelancholy, 
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
Marasmus, and wiJe-wasting pestilence. 
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint racking rheums. 

And how many thousand more might not be added to 
this frightful catalogue 1 

The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although 
universally admitted to be allegorical, has never been sa- 
tisfactorily explained. Prometnus stole fire from heaven, 
and was chained for this crime to Caucasus, where a vul- 
ture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its 
hunger. Hcsiod says that before the time of Prometheus, 
mankind were exempt from sufTering; that they enjoyed 
a vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, 
approached like sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, 
so general was this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the Au- 
gustan age, writes — 



NOTES. 109 



Thus from the sun's ethereal beam 
When bold Prometheus stole th' enlivening flame, 

Of fevers dire a ghastly brood, 
Till then unknown, th' unhappy fraud pursu'dj 

On earth their horrors baleful spread, 
And the pale monarch of the dead, 

Till then slow-moving to his prey, 
Precipitately rapid swept his way. 

Francis' Horace, Book i, Ode 3. 

How plain a language is spoken by all this. Prometheus 
(who represents the human race) eifected some great 
change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to 
culinary purposes; thus inventing an expedient for screen- 
ing from his disgust the horrors' of the shambles. From 
this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of dis- 
ease. It consumed his bein^ in every shape of its loath- 
some and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sink- 
ings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from 
the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition, 
commerce, and inequality, were then first known, when 
reason vainly attempted to guide the wanderings of exa- 
cerbated passion. I conclude this part of the subject with 
an extract from Mr. Newton's Defence of Vegetable Re- 
gimen, from which I have borrowed this interpretation of 
the fable of Prometheus. 

"Making allowance for such transpositions of the events 
of the allegory as time might produce after the important 
truths were forgotten, which this portion of the ancient 
mythology was intended to transmit, the drift of the fable 
seems to be this : — Man, at his creation, was endowed with 
the gift of perpetual youth ; that is, he was not formed to 
be a sicklv, suffering creature, as we now see him, but to 
enjoy health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom 
of his parent earth, without disease or pain. Prometheus 
first taught the use of animal food (primus bovem occidit 
Prometheus^) and of fire, with which to render it more di- 
gestible and pleasing to the taste, Jupiter, and the rest of 
the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, 
were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices oi 

* Promethus first killed an ox. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vii, sect. 57. 

d1 



110 NOTES. 



the newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the 
sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of 
a flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary pre- 
paration,) " ensued ; water was resorted to, and man for- 
feited the inestimable gift of health which he had received 
from heaven: he became diseased, the partaker of a pre- 
carious existence, and no longer descended slowly to his 
grave."* 

But just disease to luxury succeeds. 
And every death its own avenger breeds ; 
The fury passions from that blood began, 
And turned on man a fiercer savage — man. 

Man and the animals whom he has infected with his so- 
ciety, or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. — 
The wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and the wolf, are 
perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die either 
from external violence, or natural old age. But the do- 
mestic hog, the sheep, the cow, and the dog, are subject to 
an incredible variety of distempers; and, like the corrupt- 
ers of their nature, have physicians who thrive upon their 
miseries. The supereminence of man is like Satan's, a 
supereminence of pain; and the majority of his species, 
doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have reason to 
curse the untoward event, that by enabling him to commu- 
nicate* his sensations, raised him above the level of his 
fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are 
irrevocable. The whole of human science is comprised in 
one question: — How can the advantages of intellect and 
civilization be reconciled with the liberty and pure plea- 
sures of natural life 1 How can we take the benefits, and 
reject the evils of the system, which is now interwoven 
with all the fibres of our being 1 — I believe that abstinence 
from animal food and spirituous liquors would, in a great 
measure, capacitate us for the solution of this important 
question. 

It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is attribu- 
table in part to other deviations from rectitude and nature 
than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished 
by society respecting the connexion of the sexes, whence 

t Return to Nature. Cadell, 1811. 



NOTES. Ill 



the misery and diseases of unsatisfied celibacy, unenjoying 
prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty neccessa- 
rily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the 
exhalations of chemical processes : the muffling of our bo- 
dies in superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of in- 
fants :— all these, and innumerable other causes, contribute 
their mite to the mass of human evil. 

Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles 
frugiverous animals in every thing, and carniverous in no- 
thing: he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, 
nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A 
mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long, 
would probably find them alone, inefficient to hold even a 
tare. After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull must 
be degraded into the ox, and the ram into the wether, by 
the unnatural and inhurnan operation, that the flaccid fibre 
may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is 
only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary 
preparations, that it is rendered susceptible ot mastication 
or digestion ; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw 
horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. — 
Let the advocate of anim.al food force himself to a decisive 
experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, 
tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head into 
its vitals, slake his thirst with the streaming blood ; when 
fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresis- 
tible instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against 
it, and say Nature formed me for such work as this. Then, 
and then only, would he be consistent. 

Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no ex- 
ception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbiverous ani- 
mals having cellulated colons. 

The ourang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the 
order and number of his teeth. The ourang-outang is the 
most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of which are 
strictly frugiverous. There is no other species of animals, 
which live on different food, in which this analogy exists.* 
In many frugivorous animals, the canine teeth are more 
pointed and distinct than those of man. The resemblance 

* Cuvier, Lecons d'Anat. Comp. torn. iii. pages 169, 373, 448, 46 5 
480. Rees' Cyclopoedia, article Man. 



112 NOTES. 



also of the human stomach to that of the ourang-outangj is 
greater than to that of any other animal. 

TFie intestines are also identical with those of herbivo- 
rous animals, which present a large surface for absorption, 
and have ample cellulated colons. The coecum, also, 
though short, is larger than that of carnivorous animals; 
and even here the ourang-outang retains its accustomed 
similarity. 

The structure of the human frame then is that of one 
fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential particular. 
It is true, that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, 
in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulas, is 
so great in some persons of weak minds, as to be scarcely 
overcome ; but this is far from bringing any argument in 
its favor. A lamb which was fed for some time on flesh by 
a ship's crew, refused its natural diet at the end of the voy- 
age. There are numerous instances of horses, sheep, 
oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having been taught to live 
upon flesh, until they have loathed their natural aliment. 
Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, 
and other fruit, until by the gradual depravation of the di- 
gestive organs, the free use of vegetables has for a time 
produced serious inconveniences ; for a time, I say, since 
there never was an instance wherein a change from spiri- 
tuous liquors and animal food to vegetables and pure water, 
has failed ultimately to invigorate the body, by rendering 
itsjucies bland and consentaneous, and to restore to the 
mind that cheerfulness and elasticity, which not one in fifty 
possesses on the present system. A lo^'e of strong liquors 
IS also with diflliculty taught to infants. Almost every one 
remembers the wry faces which the first glass of port pro- 
duced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariably unerring; 
but to decide on the fitness of animal food, from the per- 
verted appetites which its constrained adoption produces, 
is to make the criminal a judge in his own cause; it is 
even worse, it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a 
question of the salubrity of brandy. 

What is the cause of morbid action in the animal sys- 
tem % Not the air we breathe, for our fellow denizens of 
nature breathe the same uninjured; not the water we 
drink, if remote from the pollutions of man and his inven- 



NOTES. 113 



tions,* for the animals drink it too ; not the earth we tread 
upon: not the unobscured sight of glorious nature, in the 
wood, the field, or the expanse of sky and ocean ; nothing 
that we are or do in common with the undiseased inhabi- 
tants of the forest. Something then therein we differ 
from them; our habit of altering our food bj^ fire, so that 
our appetite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of 
its gratification. Except in children there remain no traces 
of that instinct which determines, in all other animals, 
what aliment is natural or otherwise ; and so perfectly ob- 
literated are they in the reasoning adults of our species, 
that it has become necessary to urge considerations drawn 
from comparative anatomy ; to prove that we are natural- 
ly frugivorous. 

Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the 
cause of disease shall be discovered, the root from which 
all vice and misery have so long overshadowed the globe, 
will lie bare to the axe. AH the exertions of man, from 
that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear 
profit of his species. No sane mind in a sane body 
resolves upon a real crime. It is a man of violent passions, 
bloodshot eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the 
knife of murder. The system of a simple diet promises 
no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of legisla- 
tion, whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of 
the human heart, in which it had its origin, are still unas- 
suaged. It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experi- 
ment which may be tried with success, not alone by nations, 
but by small societies, families, and even individuals. In 
no cases has a return to vegetable diet produced the slight- 
est injury; in most it has been attended with changes un- 
deniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be born with 
the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace 
all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural ha- 
bits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge 
to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are not 

* The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying water, 
and the diseases which arise from its adulteration in civilized coun- 
tries, is suflaciently apparent. See Dr. Lambe's Reports on Cancer. 
I do not assert that the use of water is in itself unnatural, but that 
the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable of occasion- 
ing disease. 



114 NOTES. 



those mineral and vegetable poisons that have been intro- 
duced for its extirpation ! How many thousands have be- 
come murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, 
dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fer- 
mented liquors ; who, had they slaked their thirst only with 
pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happiness 
of iheir own unperverted feelings. How many groundless 
opinions and absurd institutions have not received a gene- 
ral sanction from the sottishness and intemperance of in- 
dividuals! Who will assert that, had the populace of Paris 
satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table ot vegeta- 
ble nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to 
the proscription-list of Robespierre 1 Could a set of men 
whose passions were not perverted by unnatural stimuli, 
look with coolness on an auto da fe. Is it to be believed 
that a being of gentle feelings rising from his meal of roots, 
would take delight in sports of blood 1 Was Nero a man 
of temperate life 1 Could you read calm health in his 
cheek, flushed with ungovernable propensities of hatred 
for the human race 1 Did Muley Ismail's pulse beat even- 
ly, was his sk'.n transparent, did his eyes beam with health- 
fulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheerfulness and 
benignity! Though history has decided none of these 
q^uestions, a child could not hesitate to answer in the ne^a- 
tive. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buonaparte, his 
wrinkled brow and yellow eye, the ceaseless inquietude of 
his nervous system, speak no less plainly the character of 
his unresting ambition than his murders and his victories. 
It is impossible, had Bonaparte descended from a race of 
vegetable feeders, that he could have had either the in- 
clination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bour- 
bons. The desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in 
the individual, the ()Ower to tyrannize would certainly not 
be delegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation, 
nor rendered impotent and irrational by disease. Preg- 
nant, indeed, with inexhaustible calamity is the renun- 
ciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical nature ; 
arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason suspect the 
multitudinous sources of disease in civilized life. Even 
common water, that apparently innoxious pabulum, when 
corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly and in- 



NOTES. 115 



sidious destroyer.* Who can wonder that all the induce- 
ments, held out by God himself in the Bible, to virtue 
should have been vainer than a nurse's tale ; and that those 
dogmas, by which he has there excited and justified the most 
ferocious propensities, should have alone been deemed es- 
sential ; whilst Christians are in the daily practice of all 
those habits which have infected with disease and crime, 
not only the reprobate sons, but those favored children of 
the common Father's love. Omnipotence itself could not 
save them from the consequences of this original and uni- 
versal sin. 

There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of 
vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, 
wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is 
gradually converted into strength, disease into healthful- 
ness : madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings 
of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities 
of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm 
and considerate evenness of temper, that alone might offer 
a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of society. 
On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and 
our only malady : the term of our existence would be pro- 
tracted ; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude oth- 
ers from the enjoyment of it : all sensational delights would 
be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; the very sense of 
being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now 
feel it in some few and favored moments of our youth. — 
By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I 
conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair 
trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely super- 
fluous on a subject whose merits an experience of six 
months would set forever at rest. But it is only among the 
enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of ap- 
petite and prejudice can be expected, even though its ulti- 
mate excellence should not admit of dispute, ft is found 
easier by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate 
their torments by medicine, than to prevent them by regi- 
men. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably sensual and 
indocile : yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded, that when 
the benefits ol vegetable diet are mathematically proved ; 



* Lanibe's Reports on Cancer. 



116 NOTES. 



when it is as clear that those who live naturally are exempt 
from premature death, as that nine is not one, the most 
sottish of mankind will feel a preference towards a long 
and tranquil, contrasted with a short and pamful life. On 
the average, out of sixty persons, four die in three years. 
Hopes are entertained, that in April, 1814, a statement will 
be given that sixty persons, all having lived more than 
three years on vegetables and pure water, are then in per- 
fect health. More than two years has now elapsed ; not 
one of them has died; no such example will be found in any 
sixty persons taken at random. Seventeen persons of all 
ages (the families of Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton) have 
lived for seven years on this diet without a death, and la- 
most without the slightest illness. Surely, when we con- 
sider that some of these were infants, and one a martyr to 
asthma, now nearly subdued, we may challenge any sev- 
enteen persons taken at random in this city to exhibit a 
parallel case. Those who may have been excited to ques- 
tion the rectitude of established habits of diet, by these 
loose remarks, should consult Mr. Newton's luminous and 
eloquent essay.* 

When these proofs come fairly before the world, and are 
clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, it is scarce- 
ly possible that abstinence from aliments demonstrably 
pernicious should not become universal. 

In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be the 
weight of evidence ; and when a thousand persons can be 
produced, who have lived on vegetables and distilled wa- 
ter, who have to dread no disease but old age, the world 
will be compelled to rega.rd animal flesh and fermented 
liquors as slow but certain poisons. The change which 
would be produced by simpler habits on political economy, 
is sufficiently remakable. The monopolizing eater of ani- 
mal flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by de- 
voring an acre at a meal, and many loaves of bread would 
cease to contribute to gout, madness, and apoplexy, in the 
shape of a pint of porter, or a dram of gin, when appeasing 
the long protracted famine of the hard-working peasant's 
hungry babes. The quantity of nutritious vegetable mat- 

* Return to Nature, or defence of Vegetable Regimen.—Cadell, 
1811. 



NOTES. 117 



ter, consumed in fattening the carcass of an ox, would 
afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving indeed, and 
incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediaiely 
from the bosom of the earth. The most fertile districts of 
the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by rpen for 
animals at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely incapa- 
ble of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any 
great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural craving for 
clead ilesh, ar.d they pay for the greater license of the pri- 
vilege, by subjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, 
the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this 
great reform would insensibly become agricultural : com- 
merce with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would 
gradually decline ; more natural habits would produce 
gentler manners, and the excessive complication of politi- 
cal relations would be so far simplified that every indivi- 
dual might feel and understand why he loved his country, 
and took a personal interest in its welfare. How would 
England, for example, depend on the caprices of foreign 
rulers, if she contained within herself all the necessaries, 
and despised whatever they possessed of the luxuries of 
lifel How could they starve her into compliance with 
their views'? Of what consequence would it be that they 
refused to take her woollen manufactures, when large and 
fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to the waste 
ofpasturage 1 On a natural system of diet, we should re- 
quire no spices from India ; no wines from Portugal, Spain, 
France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous articles 
of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and 
which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such 
calamitous and sanguinary national disputes. In the his- 
tory of modern times, the avarice of commercial monopo- 
ly, no less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, 
seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have 
added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and indo- 
cility to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever be re- 
membered, that it is the direct influence of commerce to 
make the interval between the richest and the poorest man, 
wider and more unconquerable. Let it be remembered, 
that it is a foe to every thing of real worth and excellence 
in the human character. The odious and disgusting aris- 
tocracy of wealth, is built upon the ruins of all that is good 



118 NOTES. 



in chivalry or republicanism ; and luxury is the forerunner 
of a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to 
realize a state of society, where all the energies of man 
shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness'? 
Certainly, if this advantage (the object of all political spe- 
culation) be in any degree attainable, it is attainable only 
by a community, which holds out no factitious incentives 
to the avarice and ambition of the [ew, and which is inter- 
nally organized for the liberty, security, and comfort of the 
many. None must be entrusted with power (and money 
is the completest species of power) who do not stand 
pledged to use it exclusively for the general benefit. But 
the use of animal flesh and fermented li9Uors, directly mi- 
litates with this equality of the rights of man. The peas- 
ant cannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leav- 
ing his family to starve. Without disease and war, those 
sweeping curtailers of population, pasturage would includ'-^*. 
a waste too great to be afforded. The labor requisite to 
support a family is far lighter=^' than is usually supposed. 
The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the 
aristocracy, the army, and the manufacturers. 

The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater 
than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil. 
To remedy the abuses of legislation, before we annihilate 
the propensities by which they are produced, is to suppose, 
that by taking away the effect, the cause will cease to ope- 
rate. But the efficacy of this system depends entirely on 
the proselytism of individuals, and grounds its merits, as a 
benefit to the community, upon the total change of the 
dietetic habits in its members. It proceeds securely from 
a number of particular cases to one that is universal, and 
has this advantage over the contrary mode, that one error 
does not invalidate all that has gone before. 

Let not too much, however, be expected from this sys- 

* It has come under the author's experience, that some of the 
workmen on an embankment in North Wales who, in consequence 
of the inability of the proprietor to pay them, seldom received their 
wages, have supported large families by cultivating small spots of 
sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's poem, " Bread 
of the Poor," is an account of an industrious laborer, who, by work- 
ing in a small garden before and after his day's task, attained to an 
enviable state of independence. 



NOTES. 119 



tern. The healthiest among us is not exempt from heredi- 
tary disease. The most symrnetrical, athletic, and longj 
lived is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he would 
have been had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors 
accumulated for him a certain portion of malady and de- 
formity. In the most perfect specimen of civilized nian, 
something is still found wanting by the physiological critic. 
Can a return to nature, then, instantaneously eradicate 
predispositions that have been slowly taking root in the 
silence of innumerable ages 1 Indubitably not. All that I 
contend for is, that from the moment of the relinquishing 
all unnatural habits, no new disease is generated ; and that 
the predisposition to hereditary maladies gradually perishes 
for want of its accustomed supply. In cases of consump- 
tion, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invari- 
able tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. 

Those who may be induced by these remarks to give 
the vegetable system a fair trial, should, in the first place, 
date the commencement of their practice from the mo- 
ment of their conviction. All depends upon breaking 
through a pernicious habit resolutely, and at once. Dr. 
Trotter asserts, that no drunkard was ever reformed by 
gradually relinquishing his dram.* Animal flesh in its ef- 
fects on the human stomach, is analogous to a dram. It is 
similar to the kind, though differing in the degree, of its 
operation. The proselyte to a pure diet, must be warned 
to expect a temporary diminution of muscular strength. 
The substraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice to ac- 
count for this event. But it is only temporary, and is sue 
ceeded by an equable capability for exertion, far surpassing 
his former various and fluctuating strength. Above all, he 
will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such exer- 
tion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that 
painful and diflicult panting now felt by almost every one, 
after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will be 
equally capable of bodily exertion or mental application, 
atter as before his simple meal. He will feel none of the 
narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irritability, the direct 
consequence of exhausting stimuli, would yield to the pow- 
er of natural and tranquil impulses. He will no longer 

* See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. 



120 NOTES. 



pine under the lethargy of ennui, that unconquerable wea- 
riness of life, more to be dreaded than death itself. He 
will escape the epidemic madness which broods over its 
own injurious notions of the Deity, and " realizes the hell 
that priests and beldams feign." Every man forms, as it 
we're, his god from his own character; to the divinity of one 
of simple habits, no offering would be more acceptable 
than the happiness of his creatures. He would be incapa- 
ble of hatmg or persecuting others for the love of God. — 
He will find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a 
system of perfect epicurism. He will no longer be inces- 
santly occupied in blunting and destroying those organs 
from which he expects his gratification. The pleasures of 
taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, 
turnips, lettuces, with a desert of apples, gooseberries, 
currants, raspberries, and in winter, oranges, apples, and 
pears, is far greater than is supposed. Those who wait 
until they can eat this plain fare with the sauce of appetite 
will scarcely join with the hypocritical sensualist at a Lord 
Mayor's feast, who declaims against the pleasures of the 
table. Solomon kept a thousand concubines, and owned 
in despair that all was vanity. The man whose happiness 
is constituted by the society of one amiable woman, would 
find some difficulty in sympathizing with the disappoint- 
ment of this venerable debauchee. 

I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the 
ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate 
moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He 
will embrace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its beau- 
ty, its simplicity, and its promise ot wide-extended benefit : 
unless custom has turned poison into food, he will hate the 
brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct ; it will be a con- 
templation full of horror and disappointment to his mind, 
that beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable 
sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs and last 
convulsions of dying animals. The elderly man, whose 
youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who has 
lived with apparant nioderation, and is afflicted with a va- 
riety of painful maladies, would find his account in a bene- 
ficial chanse, produced without the risk of poisonous me- 
dicines. The mother to whom the perpetual restlessness 
of disease, and unaccountable deaths incident to her chil- 



NOTES. 121 



dren, are the causes of incurable unhappiness, would on 
this diet experience the satisfaction of beholding their per- 
petual health and natural playfulness.* 

The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases, 
that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by 
medicine. How much lono^er will man continue to pimp 
for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, implacable, 
and eternal foe 1 

" You apply the term wild to lions, panthers, and ser- 
pents, yet in your own savage slaughters, you far surpass 
them in ferocity, for the blood shed by them is a matter of 
neccessity, and requsite for their subsistence. 

***** 

" That man is not by nature destined to devour animal 
food, is evident from the construction of the human frame, 
which bears no resemblance to wild beasts or birds of prey. 
Man is not provided with claws or talons, with sharpness 
of fang or tusk, so well adapted to tear and lacerate ; nor 
is his stomach so well braced and muscular, nor his animal 
spirits so warm as to enable him to digest this solid mass of 
animal flesh. On the contrary, nature has made his teeth 
smooth, his mouth narrow, and his tongue soft; and has 
contrived by the slowness of his digesnon, to divert him 
from devouring a species of food so ill-adapted to his frame 
and constitution. But if you will still miaintain that such 
is your natural mode of subsistance, then follow nature in 
your mode of killing your prey, and employ neither knife, 
hammer or hatchet, but like wolves, bears, and lions, 
seize an ox with your teeth, grasp a boar round the body, 

* See Mr. Newton's book. His children are the most beautiful 
arid healthy creatures it is possible to conceive : the girls are perfect 
models for a sculptor ; their dispositions are also the most gentle and 
conciliating ; the judicious treatment which they experience in other 
points, may be a corelative cause of this. In the first five years of 
their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,500 die of various dis- 
eases, and how many more of those that survive are not rendered 
miserable by maladies not immediately mortal "? The quality and 
quantity of a woman's milk are materially injured by the use of 
dead flesh. In an island, near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be 
got, the children invariably die of tetanus, before they are three 
weeks old, and the population is supplied from the main land.— • 
Sir O. Mackenzie's History of Iceland. See also Emile, chap. i. d 
53, 54, 56. ^ 

d2 



122 NOTES. 



or tear asunder a lamb or a hare, and like the savage tribe, 

devour them still panting in the agonies of death. 
***** 

" We carry our luxury still farther by the variety of sau- 
ces and seasonings which we add to our beastly banquets, 
mixing together oil, wine, honey, pickles vinegar, and 
Syrian and Arabian ointments and perfumes, as if we 
intended to bury and embalm the carcases on which we 
feed. The difficulty of digesting such a mass of matter re- 
duced in our stomachs to a state of liquefaction and putre- 
faction, is the source of endless disorders in the human 
frame. 

*** ***** 

" First of all, the wild mische vious animals were selected 
for food, and then the birds and fishes were dragged to 
slaughter; next the human appetite directed itself against 
the laborious ox, the useful and fleece-bearing sheep, and 
the cock the guardian of the house. At last by this prepa- 
ratory discipline, man became matured for human massa- 
cres, slaughters and wars." Plautus. 



THE END. 



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Works on Science, by various authors. Histories, &c., 
adapted to libraries. 

The works published by George H. Evans, at wholesale 
or retail. 

Tracts. — A large assortment from able pens ; cheap by 
the hundred. 

EAll orders must be accompanied loith cash, aiid for such 
, as an accommodation, we will procure any works pub- 
lished in New York or London. 










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A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIONC 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724) 779-211 j 











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